Editorial: Time for action, not a slimy excuse

Read this introduction from a Times of Malta story dated September 2016: “The operators of four tuna fish farms were served with an emergency enforcement order this morning, hours after it emerged that more than half of the fish farm cages are illegal.”

And then this story from September 2022: “A pilot project trialling the use of manufactured feed for farmed tuna could be the solution to eliminating sea slime that pools on Malta’s coastline.”

For several years, slicks of oily, fishy-smelling slime have intermittently coated Malta’s eastern shores. Though many pointed at the tuna farms, the operators always managed to shift responsibility. And a solution was never found.

The Maltese Aquaculture Producers Federation said the patches had to be analysed and that the results would, rather inconveniently, be published “towards the end of the summer”.

Until last week, federation CEO Charlon Gouder was bleating that the filth along the coast was not “necessarily fish slime”. Of course not. It could have been many other things, and it is seriously tempting to resort to sarcasm. But let us not indulge.

Enough to point out that even Archbishop Charles Scicluna described the smelly, oily slime as “another sad instance in our country of the many paying for the enrichment of the few”.

The National Statistics Office reported that, in 2023, 143 cages were being used by seven fish farm operators, which spent an average of €120,000 a year for “environmental monitoring”.

What exactly has been done by this sector over the past few years? They have certainly kept the ERA busy since it was set up in 2017: it has issued 29 administrative fines and stop orders against fish farms since then. There was a time when this new sector was raking it in, not the slime, but the money. But while EU membership put pressure on operators to mitigate its impact, dragging many of the cages into deeper water has not done the trick, not by a long shot.

In 2023, the industry showed an operating loss of €84.3 million, after profits of €64 million the previous two years. That is worrying: an operator trying to cut its losses is hardly going to put the environment first.

In the past weeks, our newsroom has been inundated with reports from readers complaining about slime patches clogging their bathing areas.

Last weekend, we went out to sea with Martin Bugelli – who previously served as Malta’s technical attaché for agriculture at the EU – who showed how feeding practices were one of the main causes of slime reaching bathing areas. The fish farming industry insisted it complied with all rules but, as the public pressure mounted, six cleaning vessels were brought in to remove the sea slime. Finally, last Saturday the federation offered a humble apology.

So, we have the federation saying it is cleaning up (and collecting all sorts of other waste) and ERA saying it “promptly instructs operators to take all necessary measures to contain and collect [slime]”.

We saw the PN lambasting the prime minister for going on holiday and ignoring the mess and the Labour Party sniffing that “the majority of Maltese beaches are deemed excellent and suitable for swimming”.

These are all knee-jerk reactions, with entities taking positions they are forced into by public pressure.

The slime will be cleared up, the winds will change, the fish farm operators will complain that they are losing money and want government help, and we will all forget about it – until next year, and the next.

Correction August 20, 2025: A previous version misstated the number of fish farm cages as 147.