MARSAXLOKK, Malta — If there's one thing Maltese fishermen fear even more than a thrashing three-meter swordfish, it's the EU's growing momentum toward quotas across the Mediterranean.

The fishermen of Marsaxlokk, Malta's largest swordfish port, offer a perfect case study of why the seemingly obscure issue of catch limits is snowballing into a bitter political stand-off between Northern and Southern Europe.

The tensions hinge on the fact that the EU has generally avoided imposing quotas in Southern European waters, although they are common off Northern Europe. Massive overfishing, however, is now forcing the political agenda. EU leaders gathered in Malta in March to launch a new initiative to save the Mediterranean, which — to the ire of the fishing industry — includes far wider use of quotas.

As a swordfish fisherman, Melchiore Camilleri will be one of the first to face catch limits, which he slams as "unfair."

The 26-year-old can only reminisce wistfully about about last year's swordfish catch. In December alone, he harvested 500 kilograms.

"I made good money that month. I wanted to catch swordfish again this year, but I don't have a quota," he explains, flipping a far less lucrative cuttlefish into a bucket, where the gasping creature expires with a death rattle.

For Camilleri, the gravest injustice of impending quotas is that he feels artisanal vessels like his seven-meter Saint Michael will be hit hardest. In all, small-scale fishermen account for some 80 percent of all activity in the Mediterranean, like those in traditional Maltese boats called luzzu.

"Italian boats catch most of the fish here. For me, this is unfair that now we may all have quotas, when we have been fishing here for generations and it's not our fault that there are no more fish," he says. "The big boats are the ones who caught all the swordfish."

Fished out

The Mediterranean is the emergency zone of EU fisheries policy. It accounts for some 8 percent of EU fish catches, but 93 percent of stocks are considered to be overfished.

The Mediterranean has also long been considered the rogue of EU fisheries policy. Instead of quotas, piecemeal national and international legislation has targeted fleet sizes by restricting days at sea and paying fishermen to scrap their boats.

"We are completely against a total allowable catch and quota system" — Javier Garat Pérez, president of Europêche

Brussels is not conjuring the idea of quotas out of nowhere. Two species have already faced catch limits in the Mediterranean: tuna and swordfish.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas implemented a recovery plan for bluefin tuna in 2006 to bring the species back from the edge of collapse. It is ICCAT that is now also pushing a new regime for swordfish. Swordfish quotas were agreed last year, but are still to be divvied up among EU countries.

"We have already seen that good management pays off with the recovery of the bluefin tuna. We can do it again for a Mediterranean route to recovery," Fisheries Commissioner Karmenu Vella tells POLITICO.

Vella is turning total allowable catches into the cornerstone of his policy. These represent the total weight of fish allowed to be caught in the basin, and quotas for each species allocated by vessel.

In February, the Commission made its first bold push toward quotas for smaller species by proposing a multiannual plan for sardines, anchovies, mackerel and horse mackerel in the Adriatic Sea, the first of its kind for the northern Mediterranean basin.

But the Mediterranean's fishing powerhouses, Italy and Spain, immediately slammed the Commission for suggesting quotas. Malta, which holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union, is also standing behind its fishermen.

"The Mediterranean is a very particular sea. It is crucial to move to management strategies that are more tailor-made to the ecosystem and that manage it as one whole and not in piecemeal fashion," said a Maltese official.

Industry representatives in Brussels are adamant that Mediterranean supplies can be protected in other ways. "We are completely against a total allowable catch and quota system," says Javier Garat Pérez, president of the fishing industry organization Europêche.

The only fishing heavyweight supporting the Commission in its plans is France, according to sources familiar with the file, after Paris — previously as staunchly anti-quota as Madrid and Rome — made a U-turn over the past two years.

France has environmental scientists on side. "The Mediterranean is no different and should not be treated as such," says Ilaria Vielmini, a marine scientist at Oceana in Europe. "It is our responsibility to future Mediterranean generations. They should not inherit an empty sea."

David vs. Goliath

Back on the docks of Marsaxlokk, Camilleri unloads his morning catch into a freezer for his mother to sell at the roadside. Only the octopus remains in the water, drifting next to the luzzu, imprisoned in a black cylinder.

"I don't have a license for tuna, even though there are more in the sea. Now, I don't have quota for swordfish. This is an island country. I was born here. Tell me, how will I survive?" he says, wiping his calloused hands.

"Decision-makers in Brussels aren't taking this into account" — Jason Grixti, Marsaxlokk native

The swordfish quota system will see national governments assign vessel quotas based on historical catch size, meaning big boats receive larger shares than artisanal fishermen. "I don’t take too much notice of the quotas," said Wayne Schembri, captain of a 19-meter purse seiner across the port. "This is a big scale operation, so we have more than enough to make a living."

While he empathizes with his smaller rivals, he doesn't agree vessels like his are responsible for the decline of Mediterranean stocks. “It's not fair to only blame big boats for what happened to the swordfish," he says.

As Brussels prepares to switch away from the iconic tuna and swordfish stocks to smaller fry, Marsaxlokk native Jason Grixti, an advocate for small-scale fishermen in his community, predicts an emergent "social justice issue."

"If you make laws against fishermen, where are they going to work?" he says. "They are fishermen by profession like a lawyer is a lawyer by profession. Decision-makers in Brussels aren't taking this into account."