Silt makes diving 'impossible'

The Professional Diving Schools' Association is livid that one of Malta's prime diving sites is being endangered due to what it claims is the negligence of the contractor responsible for the construction work at the Cirkewwa quay, a Malta Maritime Authority project.

Association spokesman Martin Vella said that one of the conditions stipulated by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority for the approval of the project was that the developer had to set up an underwater curtain to filter silt.

"This silt curtain would also prevent fine dust particles from spreading into the diving site. However, this has never been set up and it seems that the silt curtain has not even arrived from abroad," Mr Vella said.

Mr Vella said that the developer had gone ahead with the works this week, with the result that a long milky white trail of dust marked the sea in Cirkewwa near the diving site on the west side, close to the lighthouse.

"On Monday and Tuesday the situation had deteriorated so badly that the visibility underwater had been drastically reduced from the usual clarity of 30 metres to a mere five metres or even less in some areas," he said.

"The silt makes it impossible for us to dive and if this construction work continues unabated the damage could be permanent," he said.

A spokesman for MMA said they had been informed of the matter and would be looking into it.

Meanwhile, the contractor, Polidano Bros. Ltd. director Charles Polidano defended himself and said that the silt curtain could not be installed until dredging works were completed.

He insisted that the silt curtain was now in Malta and would be installed once the company started building the breakwater.

However, Mr Vella said this was an unacceptable situation, especially since at this time of year about 200 divers visited the site every day.

"Several diving schools take foreigners on a diving holiday to Malta, to this site, and we have received several complaints from them - to put it mildly they are not impressed," he said.

"This is one of the best diving sites in Malta. For us divers, this site is like going for a walk to Buskett, only to find that a quarry had been set up and dust was suffocating the trees," he said, giving an example of the gravity of the situation.

Mr Vella said that such incidents threatened the local diving industry and pointed out that divers who had had a bad experience would not come back.

"We are all the time discussing ways in which to attract upmarket tourists. Divers are such upmarket tourists, but we are risking losing them," he said.

Mr Vella said the association was extremely worried about the situation, because the diving industry could not afford to lose such a precious site.

"The diving industry is very important to the country's tourism. I do not want to sound alarmist, but if we continue at this rate we risk losing some prime diving sites," he said.

Mr Vella said that apart from such incidents, diving sites were also threatened by fish farms and sewage.

"The fish farm in Mistra has been there for 10 years and the Posidonia sea grass bed underneath it is dead. Abroad fish farms have to be moved occasionally and have to be placed at a certain depth so that detritus could flow easily," he said.

"I think the ideal solution would be to move all fish farms to one site, away from the coast, to an area which is deep enough," he suggested.