
We originally penned this piece at the end of November 2024 but we were working with a third party to edit it further to make it more acceptable for print/online media. Through our own challenge in juggling other things, time passed and whilst the third party provided his assistance, finishing it off was not on the cards. That changed with the overhyped award post we published a few hours ago, in which we promised to share this piece. It’s rough around the edges and not flattering in the least, but we hope someone passes on the message to maybe, maybe, see a meaningful change in approach.
Introduction
Malta’s diving and marine recreation industry is celebrated for its beautiful under and above water environments, but it faces significant challenges that threaten its long-term viability and attractiveness for repeat quality tourists. This article critically examines the infrastructure shortcomings and the evident lack of quality, which hinder the industries’ growth and sustainability.
Infrastructure Shortcomings
The diving experience in Malta is severely hindered by inadequate infrastructure. Many dive sites lack essential facilities such as proper access points, signage, and safety measures. For instance, the absence of well-maintained entry and exit points can pose risks to divers, especially those unfamiliar with the terrain. Furthermore, the state of existing facilities, including kitting up areas, bathroom facilities and lack of diving site management detracts from the overall divers’ experience.
In emergency situations, divers must be treated on the hard concrete or tarmac in most of the major diving sites, including the supposedly prime areas such as at Ċirkewwa and Xatt l-Aħmar in Gozo. Only at Ċirkewwa is emergency oxygen, a spinal board and an AED are available for use (the latter only available after office hours).
This despite empty rooms right next to the excellently kept bathrooms at Ċirkewwa staying empty and decaying since the inauguration of the Ċirkewwa Ferry Terminal. Xatt l-Aħmar’s nearby shrubs and fields serve as an open-air bathroom for most of the year, despite the scuttling of four wrecks to become artificial reefs over the last thirty years.
The concrete kitting up benches at Ċirkewwa after ten years being there are disintegrating. The lights are mostly broken pillars of plastic. Fences mangled and torn away a year ago separating the site from the terminal area have not been restored. Rather, a low quality fence blocked off the pavement in front of the original fences and bins placed are inaccessible! Dive maps damaged are just sitting by the wall, with their stands having become rusty unsightly frames. At least the maps were saved, at other sites these are completely missing. No parking signs were missing for months, then signs with obvious spelling errors were placed, to be replaced a few weeks later as a face-saving measure!
Kitting up areas in sites such as nearby the new M/T Hephaestus wreck at Xatt l-Aħmar have never materialised. Use the back of the truck or van, or the drainage stained rocks from the frequent leaks further up. Take your pick. Go dive the HMS Maori at St. Elmo Point in Valletta, but ensure you leave someone with the cars, or you’ll find them broken into.
Go dive at the Dwejra world-famous Blue Hole and the former Azure Window Reef in Gozo and pray you don’t slip on the rocks whilst walking in and out. If you dare do that, go for the queue to relieve yourself at the Dwejra public bathrooms, recently restored but without the addition of an extra toilet for each mainstream gender. We suggest putting the sunscreen on, it’s going to take long.
The major diving site at Wied iż-Żurrieq is recently the subject of an application to half the parking spaces on the premise of including kitting up areas whilst increasing maintenance stores for boats to the Blue Grotto boats and creating ticketing facilities and bathrooms. The latter were not even made easily accessible for the divers, let alone these high-quality tourists being considered as users of the area. This notwithstanding that the wreck of the Um-el-Faroud is the best artificial reef accessible from shore and currently limited by the steep entry/exit steps, limited parking area and the general traffic havoc that reigns the area in summer. Calls to consider major investment in the whole area creating a revamped Wied iż-Żurrieq experience seems to be considered as a waste of money.
If choosing to go offshore diving, your experience starts at quays with rubbish strewn around and shabby mooring facilities. Quays that pray for refurbishment and where everything made of metal is so worn out that sometimes you think it will fall off if you tie a rope to it. Refurbishment works at Marfa Quay took over three years, but no such treatment was given to Ċirkewwa South Quay, Fekruna and no facility is available to cater the south-west since Wied iż-Żurrieq and Għar Lapsi are naturally limited and controlled by fishing and Blue Grotto pleasure rides operators. Closer to the capital, Ta’ Xbiex requires a fee to the Marina there to load and unload as essentially the quay has been privatised.
What about out at sea? Wreck marker buoys serving as a visual clue for boats to retain safe distances are unable to remain year-round in the water and get removed as soon as summer is over. Unlike their fish-farm cousins which apparently don’t suffer the same swells. Maybe because they protect a much more valued commodity by private operators and their cronies in high places, so they are made of better quality?
Recreational and commercial marine traffic irrespectively of whether buoys are present repeatedly flout no access or no speeding zones, aimed to preserve the life and limb of swimmers, freedivers and divers whilst also encouraging the protection of the conservation zones from illegal fishing and underwater noise to promote marine life. Frequently, the buoys instead serve as a perfect targeting aid for the poachers who operate without any control.
Gozo lacks one single managed diving site. Comparisons to Ċirkewwa have been made, where simple monitoring via NGOs managed over a few years to reduce poaching which improved massively the fish life in the area. The lack of fish at most sites is only overcome thanks to its underwater environment.
As recently stated by a long active diving school owner, the underwater environment in Gozo has turned into a beautiful cemetery.
No wonder the Gozo Tourism Association called for one to be setup, making parallels with the Ċirkewwa Marine Park. Why is the latter still unofficial? No law announcing its creation, little beyond an unenforceable management plan, three costly boundary marker buoys and a website is shown in public. The entrusted NGO despite suffering its own difficulties seems to have done the foundation work. But where is the beef? Not even a sign exists on land calling the Ċirkewwa Marine Park as such, which has led on several times for ambulances to get mixed up on the correct route to assist in emergencies! Dream on Gozo Tourism Association, not even your wish has materialised fully in Malta!
This is just the start of the long list of issues at recreational diving sites around the island. Over 150,000 annual dedicated diving tourists visit these shores. Many resident taxpayers, many of whom pay through income tax a lot more than the standard mean wage. These work in all the high-quality sectors like aviation, technology, financial services, gaming, hospitality, high-tech engineering, healthcare and others. Their like-minded friends from abroad do come to visit them, but one is almost shy to present the sites as they are. The local public stands to gain at most of these sites as well, as these many times these overlap with swimming areas. If one does not SCUBA dive, but only uses a mask and snorkel, a new world can open up to them too!
Lack of 360-degree commitment
A critical issue plaguing Malta’s diving sites is the lack of commitment among various government departments and authorities. Rather than adopting a collaborative approach to address infrastructure, cleanliness and environmental issues, many stakeholders operate in silos.
A strategy launched by the Malta Tourism Authority and the Ministry for Gozo sometimes feels like another document not worth the paper written on it. We could also question the contribution a certain “consultant” provided up to a few months just before its launch before the post became vacant! Questions to the MTA on its implementation status from divinginfo.mt took a year to be answered, and this only after an ignored FOI request and Ombudsman pressure led to a response with little detail but a clear, “we’ll tell you when we feel” approach.
Questions on an access ladder that was removed from Reqqa Point in Gozo this October were replied with a “Summer is now over” response, despite that the same strategy was widely quoted to ensure such access is maintained year-round to address the issue of seasonality. For the higher-equipped, higher-trained, and higher quality tourist from Europe and even further, our water temperature is a non-issue when using drysuits and equipment worth tens of thousands of euros. It’s equivalent to their summer temperature back home! Alas, the left hand does not know what the right does, and sometimes, such as the Gozitan example up here, the same Ministry hand had its name on the strategy!
This lack of investment and practically confrontational approach towards those calling a spade a spade results in neglected sites that deteriorate over time, leading to subpar experiences for divers and tourists alike. Additionally, there is often little accountability for maintenance and improvement, leading to a cycle of complacency and decline.
The absence of a commitment to tackle infrastructural concerns further underscores the need for a coordinated effort. We can extend this to other marine activities, from recreational boating to tourist tour ships which are unmanageable in most instances, and which consistently damage the underwater environment through irresponsible anchoring partly due to lack of ecological mooring facilities. On this area, one cannot but note that even enforcement of maritime and ecological rules in near-shore areas in next to inexistent.
A strategy for protection of Natura 2000 Marine Protected Areas by the Environmental Resources Authority was pretty much unannounced in the public sphere save for upload on its website. A lost opportunity for a Minister to carry out a nice PR stunt, or simply the indication of how much this was treated like an unwanted pest?
The measures contained lacked so much ambition, that one could well see that this was issued only as it was forced upon authorities by the European Union. No news on its implementation, almost two years in its running, is evident in the public sphere.
Pilot measures on sustainable anchoring, protection of Posidonia beds, various studies, monitoring and awareness of the marine environment, fish revival areas, prevention of abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear are all mostly on paper or the efforts so miniscule that they are insignificant.
We did note the proposed sea urchin harvesting ban was put in place, only after the target species became almost extinct as realised in studies undertaken a few years before! Its enforcement appears to be the result of only an environmental enforcement NGO’s work which in one single reported instance, resulted in someone being bagged for having harvested hundreds of these protected sea urchins!
Marine assets are held by Transport Malta, the Malta Police Force, the Armed Forces of Malta, the Environmental Resources Authority, the Civil Protection Department and even the Cleaning and Maintenance Department. However, the first four don’t share assets for co-ordinated and continued enforcement purposes, and the latter two use them for specific support in search & rescue and the occasional cleanup functions. Fisheries apparently have none, though we stand to be corrected.
No one seems to have ever thought that a limited set of expensive assets can be maintained in active service could be used by a multi-disciplinary nearshore water-borne service (with an appropriate shore based back-office and expert support function). One where the same basic crew has knowledge of seamanship, legal obligations, environmental protection and enforcement authority whilst achieving coverage of most of the nearshore waters whenever marine conditions allow.
One where assets are standardised and maintained using long-term maintenance agreements or in-house maintenance yards. These would not have to maintain a whole fleet of different vessels with different spares and technical knowledge requirements. Spare vessels could be kept at the ready to ensure availability year-round. Long-term administrative, service and replacement planning could be dreamt of as well.
The Path Forward
A dedicated entity that safeguards this sector of the blue economy, across all the archipelago is needed to reinvest at least a percentage of the hundreds of millions of euros these industries bring in is needed. It however cannot be managed by politicians on a five-year or the lifetime of a Minister’s term.
The structure needs a governance board which brings in local users, fishing, diving and tourist boat operators, environmental and enforcement authorities that have the sea at heart as their livelihood and active beyond a four-times a year board meeting presence.
It needs to function as a separate and fully public open and accountable entity to not repeat the errors of the fiefdoms created in other areas, such as land management, construction, tourism and fisheries. Remuneration and benefits for its management need to be directly linked to operational results against the founding principles, not how many votes the Minister gets at the next election. Because governments will change as much as one changes clothes, but our sea, our outer frame as an island, will remain. And our frame is currently well up for some new gilding before the wood that makes it rots.
Conclusion
By addressing these critical issues, Malta can preserve its unique under and above water offerings and secure its status as a premier marine destination for future generations.
Call to Action
It’s time for government to have a new vision for marine leisure activities. One that encompasses quality in all facets, environmental protection and long-term sustainability.