Tips for summer

The summer months are here and many Maltese start preparing their BBQ sets to meet family and friends and enjoy a meal by the seaside. Others inspect their boats and engines to be sure they are in optimum condition for the summer months. They paint the bottom of the boat with antifouling and check that their mooring is safe to avoid any disasters during a windy summer day. Amateur fishermen check their rods and lures and change the rusted hooks which were idle throughout the winter months.

I would like to bring to attention the following points.

The coastline should be kept clean. Unfortunately, many people leave a lot of rubbish and charcoal behind them after a BBQ and these end up in the sea. Many of these substances are not biodegradable - for example, the chemical nature of many detergents, plastics and packaging materials makes them resistant to microbial degradation. Such objects should be disposed of in bins provided on the coastline in popular places, or taken back home and discarded in the proper way.

Boat owners are reminded to be careful not to spill any petrol into the sea and not to use excessive lubrication oil with the petrol, to prevent sea and air pollution. It is important to secure any plastic material which can be blown out of the boat and into the sea. This material may act as a trap for fish and turtles.

Amateur fishermen are reminded that it is unlawful to catch fish or cephalopods of a size less than the following schedule: vopa, 9cm; arznell and munqar, 9cm; klamar, 10cm; trill, 10cm. All other fish should not be caught below the size of 11.5cm. The latter implies that popular fish such as the kahlija, sargu, imsella, cervjola, burqax, pagella and xilpa should be carefully released from the hook and freed back into the sea. Fishing with a hook size 10 should avoid this. This regulation does not apply to the makku. Local wardens should be asked to inform amateur fishermen about these regulations.

For many years I have been appealing to the government to change the law whereby fishermen are only allowed to cast nets within an imaginary line which is drawn between two red and white bollards which are found within ports and bays. This is nonsense to me.

The law should prohibit any fisherman from casting any nets within the whole port and creek and thus prevent catching thousands of small immature fish which enter shallow waters to defend themselves from larger fish. Other fish enter to spawn.

The summer months bring a larger influx of tourists to our islands and this results in the creation of more wastes which most times end up in the sea untreated. It is estimated that sewage may take up to 100 years to leave the Mediterranean, which is a relatively closed sea. Tourism also puts pressure on the government. Such pressure usually arrives from developers who want to develop the coastline. Such development should be entirely resisted.