Scuba divers and salt farmers are at loggerheads over the right to access parts of Gozo’s north coast ahead of a key season for both industries that are crucial to the island’s economy.

Divers, who make up more than a fifth of all tourists to Gozo each year, say they are being blocked from safely reaching key dive sites because private landowners are not allowing them access to the coast.

The salt farmers, who own some of the contested lands, claim the divers are contaminating a sensitive food production area by walking over salt pans and should find another route.

And as the row hits rough waters, with both sides accusing each other of intimidation and harassment, the government claims it is unable to intervene in a private issue.

Mark Busuttil, a dive shop owner and the vice president of the Professional Diving School Association, said the landowners are making it difficult for them to access some of the top diving sites on the island.

There are issues around access to Double Arch, an area known for abundant marine life; Reqqa Point; Billinghurst Cave; Għar il-Qamħ and Cathedral Cave, an underwater cavern that is lit by sunlight in the afternoons.

A fifth of Gozo's tourists are attracted to spectacular dive sites like the Cathedral Cave, which divers say they are finding increasingly difficult to access. Photo: Shutterstock

“Most divers say the Cathedral Cave was their best dive. They are mesmerised by the beauty of these five dive sites,” Busuttil said. “But the landowners are making it too difficult.”

He said divers cannot change their long-established routes to access the sites. They carry heavy equipment and cannot afford to get exhausted walking long distances, which would increase the risk of the dive.

“It is already difficult to access the [Double Arch] dive site as is because it is located 250 metres out from the coast and it’s deep,” he explained.

“Many divers are not experienced and cannot handle long swimming distances. If we make them swim an even longer distance to the dive site, we increase the risks significantly.

“All we are asking for is a narrow passageway we can use to access the coast. But locals are scaring away tourist divers by harassing them and threatening to call the police on them. This is no way to promote our island.”

In 2019, divers comprised a fifth of the 200,000 people who spent a night in Gozo and the Gozo Tourism Authority predicts that numbers this year will reach these pre-pandemic levels.

“We cannot afford to taint the scuba diving industry because it has become indispensable for the Gozitan economy,” he argued.

Josephine Xuereb (left) is a fifth-generation salt farmer. She inherited the craft from her parents, who have been in the industry for 60 years.

But fifth-generation salt farmer Josephine Xuereb, whose salt pans are located above the Double Arch dive site, argued that the divers are damaging her family’s business.

Leli tal-Melħ, as the business is known, was featured on the Netflix series Restaurants on the Edge, the BBC’s The Apprentice and in many travel documentaries and books. They welcome researchers from international universities and some 30 reporters and film crews visit their salt pans every year. Over the past months, they have shipped their artisan salt to chefs in Japan, Mexico, Germany and the US.

“These salt pans don’t just produce a staple food, they put us on the map and generate tourism and foreign interest in Malta,” said Xuereb.

“Even our family treads very carefully on them when we work here. We can’t have divers flip-flopping their flippers all over them because it will only contaminate a very sensitive food production area.”

Xuereb said salt harvesting is a complex process involving continuous maintenance, cleaning and pumping water out of the sea and into the pans. After it is harvested, the salt grains are purified by hand.

“We spend hours of hard labour here, only to look at divers walk and change their clothes over the salt pans and sometimes even urinate in them,” she continued.

“Some divers do understand and respect our work but others start to yell and threaten us. Recently, I had one tell me: ‘I hit you once and I knock you down’.”

She thinks divers should find somewhere else to enter the sea.

“I don’t understand why the divers must absolutely walk over the salt pans. Why can’t they dive from a little further along the coast? The coast is big enough to accommodate all of us.”

Both Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri and Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, however, pledged the government will explore all avenues within its power to facilitate a compromise but they were very vague as to what those solutions might be.

Gozo Tourism Association CEO Joe Muscat said some compromise needed to be reached.

“This is not to say we must abandon the salt industry because it is equally beneficial to our small island. We must find a way to live together.”

Not all the landowners have salt pans and, in one case, there is a pending application on a site for a salt pan business.

While the owners have inherited old leases on the lands and have the right to work them, environmental lawyer Claire Bonello says it is also unclear as to what extent the land is ‘private’, meaning that they have not been able to determine the terms and conditions of the lease.

Bonello says she has been seeking to obtain this information from the Lands Authority since 2019, to no avail.

“The Public Domain Act states that the coastal perimeter, that is, the first 15 metres of land from the sea, is automatically public domain,” she explained.

“It would be beneficial to know what the original terms and conditions of the lease were because that would shed light on rights the divers have,” she said.

Both industries have pleaded with the authorities to intervene but the government is essentially arguing that this is an issue between two private parties, who must reach an agreement themselves.