The salt pans at the Salina Nature Reserve have been made to produce salt for the first time in four years, with the dedication of volunteers keen to preserve the impressive engineering of the site and the traditional method of collection.

Passers-by may have noticed the freshly harvested piles of salt dehydrating under the hot summer sun in recent weeks, like an ankle-high mountain range reflecting a crystalline white in the salt pans’ shallow waters.

Overseen by Birdlife Malta, the site has produced 60 mounds, an estimated five or six tonnes of Maltese salt from just one salt pan.

On the first day of harvest on Thursday, volunteers shovelled the mounds into the timber barns for storage.

Manuel Mallia, the Salina Nature Reserve manager, told Times of Malta that the team had been keen to keep tradition alive after an extensive restoration of the salt pans.

“The damage and neglect they suffered were largely dealt with in the rehabilitation project eight years ago,” Mallia said.

“When Birdlife Malta took over management in 2018 we found that several areas in the structure had developed faults, so we focused on addressing those, making sure the valves and canals were watertight, which eventually enabled us to segregate the smaller salt pans.”

The Salina salt pans are thought to have been built sometime in the 16th century by the Knights of St John.

They became contaminated after suffering extensive storm damage in 2003 and were eventually rehabilitated with the help of EU funding.

While some 20 tonnes of salt were harvested in 2017, EU rules prevented it from being put on the local market for sale.

The Salina volunteers have foregone most modern methods, preferring to rely on the ingenuity of our forefathers and keeping their interventions to the system minimal.

“The salt pans are actually all below sea level, so the water is intended to circulate through gravity,” Mallia explained.

In the past, a set of small canals carried the water to the pans, which were then blocked using clay and wood after filling up.

“We’ve managed to get the canals working again, improving them only slightly by installing irrigation valves instead of blocking the canals with clay and wood, to let the water circulate.”

This year, only one of the pans is making salt, with another 25 on site merely producing brine, with a potential for salt production in the future.

Mallia noted that the process begins in March or April, after the stormy season. Volunteers first shovel tonnes of mud out by hand in a deep clean and then allow sea water to flood the pans.

After that, nature must take its course and the water is left to evaporate. Thanks to a timely heatwave, which helped the salt form faster, a thin crust of the mineral had formed on the pans by the end of June, Mallia said.

Next comes another shovelling phase, where volunteers form the salt into metre-high piles and let the last of the water drain out of them.

Now, as volunteers meet at the crack of dawn to harvest the salt before the sun gets the better of them, the next phase is to send a sample of the salt collected for testing: it needs to be fit for human consumption.

After getting their hands dirty and labouring in the August heat, Mallia says the organisation is left with a sense of pride at what it has achieved.

“When Salina produced salt for one summer, it was done in a very different method than was intended,” he said.

“We wanted to get the salt pans to work the way they were intended to by the engineers that built them because it is a fantastic feat of engineering.

“We want to keep this place alive for its history, for the culture of salt making and to preserve the ecosystem, as it is a Natura 2000 site, after all.

“I really hope we’re able to share this salt for consumption because it has historically been considered one of the best in the Mediterranean.”

If approved as fit for consumption, the plan is to sell the salt as a souvenir-type product.