Fish farming and dive tourism

I refer to the article (August 26) with the heading Fish Farms Seen as Harming Dive Tourism.

The reporter saw fit to quote Alex Buttigieg, an employee of Octopus Dive Centre in St Paul's Bay, who appears to be conducting a one-man campaign against fish farming but made no attempt to contact us for our views or to check the facts.

Mr Buttigieg's views have served to place this company's fish farming efforts in a negative light and he has made several false and misleading statements.

The most important of these is his assertion that the sea by St Paul's islands was 22 metres deep and is now only 15 metres deep, insinuating that there is a sediment layer, caused by the fish farm, of seven metres. This would be incredible to even the least knowledgeable of readers but it demands immediate clarification.

Even before we started our fish-farming operations, there was an independent survey which showed that the so-called sediment was already there. The specific reference was to "a crust of some 50mm which once penetrated reveals a very soft mix. The diver had no difficulty penetrating this material to a depth of two metres with a rod". This should be self-explanatory. The sediment was there before the fish farm and so could not have been caused by it.

The scarring left by World War II bombs can still be seen directly beneath the fish-cages, indicating that there is clearly no sediment there as otherwise the craters and bombs would be completely buried, where it should be at its greatest if Mr Buttigieg's claims were true.

Indeed, we would be pleased to show Mr Buttigieg, and anyone else who is interested, for that matter, that there are many areas hundreds of metres away from the cages where there is such sediment, which can in no way have come from the cages.

Mr Buttigieg's claims as regards visibility in the water down to five metres are, to say the least, ridiculous and can be easily disproved. From 1994 to the present day, the turbidity of the water in the entire area has been tested using a scientific measurement method. There have been no changes in measured turbidity levels since we began to operate in the area. Periodically, variations in the measured turbidity relate to particular weather conditions such as rain and heavy seas. What otherwise would the underwater safari boats full of tourists visiting the area close to our cages be doing with such claimed visibility?

My own conversations with divers make it obvious that Mr Buttigieg's views are his own and are not representative of the diving community in general. In fact, many divers have expressed their satisfaction at the way the site is managed.

We believe that no serious operator would blame fish farming for the decrease in dive tourism that is being claimed. There may be other factors, like competition as most of the interviews with dive operators indicate.