For the past 25 years the amateur and professional Diving Community of Malta, including the 60,000 diving tourists annually, have been writing and arguing in favor of declaring this gem of Biodiversity to be protected and declared a marine sanctuary.
Since joining the EU Cirkewwa has become a defacto area of conservation by way of a law prohibiting some types of fishing around wrecks.
Despite of this, divers have to resort to calling in the police Administrative Law Enforcement(ALE) branch, to deal with infringements almost on a daily basis. Infringements also happen at night.
Spearfishing and the laying of parritii, (trammel nets) are but two of the infringement.
Last year a family of three spent a week at Cirkewwa clearing all the sea urchins they could get to.
This is not only an ecological disaster, but an infringement as sea urchins have a level of protection.
After meeting with the relevant Government departments and realized that there is a general consensus that Cirkewwa be protected, but that this may take a couple of years due to EU protocol, we decided that we need to take steps to have some autonomous form of protection.
The approach we have taken is that of launching Cirkewwa as a Voluntary Marine Reserve.
To do this we have already gotten the support of the various local diving Clubs as well as the Professional Diving Schools Association (PDSA), and Nature Trust Malta continued support.
We are now ready to embark on an outreach program to contact various other users, like the fishing and angling community, boat users and others that have an indirect interest of protecting this site like restaurants and hotels.
We will be collaborating with various users on the drafting out of a CODE OF PRACTICE for the various groups, as we have done for the diving community.
The aim of the group will still be that we eventually Cirkewwa be declared a Marine Sanctuary, but feel that if the VMR works than this would become either redundant or receive the unconditional support of all users.
Meanwhile there is still the problem of the ongoing irregularities.
The laying of Paritii still goes on as does the spearfishing.
In view of this, and understanding that it may be costly for the Government to have ALE personnel on site 24/7, we ask that a compromise be made and that the police officers already on duty at the Cirkewwa ferry terminal take regular foot patrols along the 300M coastline which constitutes the dive site.
This would only take a short 10mins casual walk there and back.
We are still asking that the penalties regarding the infringement to the laws, be increased to reflect the cost of prosecution
