Tsunamis ahoy!

The Simshar tragedy has featured strongly in the media for the past few weeks. Before it gets forgotten as another unfortunate incident, it has provoked some anxious inquisitiveness among the Maltese public as to how safe our territorial waters are. What was your reaction to this?

I would like to make it absolutely clear in the first place that I accept implicitly the account of what happened given by the only surviving eyewitness after the ordeal that he went through. Nevertheless, it is difficult to exclude from one's mind the possibility of there occurring in future a story such as that imagined by most people with some knowledge of what is happening in the seas around Malta.

Let me just mention two types of activity: First, there are the EU regulations about tuna fishing. But they are obviously not followed in the vast expanse of Libyan waters now under the control of Gaddafi's son, and that has given rise to some partnerships with Maltese entrepreneurs. I have heard stories of Sicilian fishermen who have trouble with the Libyan authorities for stealing catches that had been made by Maltese fishermen with Libyan benevolence. This kind of situation could easily provoke tragedies of the Simshar kind.

Another activity is the ferrying of illegal immigrants to Lampedusa, now more accessible than Sicily. Some of the arrivals by rubber dinghies as seen on TV could hardly have travelled all the way from Libya using those means. Clearly, fishing boats are being used in a sort of relay system.

Such ongoing activities make it absolutely clear that the only assurance of safety could be provided if a joint management system was set up for the whole area by all the littoral countries. The same solution is required by the great danger of oil spills because of the over-intensive passage of tankers between Malta and Sicily.

These problems make it appear to be all the greater a pity that Nicolas Sarkozy allowed his original idea of a Mediterranean Union to be whittled down to almost insignificant proportions. They also show that the projected EU marine policy will not really be of any great benefit to the Mediterranean unless participation by our southern neighbours is ensured.

You have been involved several times in discourse on maritime affairs. You are the chairman of the International Ocean Institute - Malta Operational Centre, formally established at the University of Malta in 1972. Let's not forget that Malta has always been an island and the sea has always surrounded it with its variant moods. Considering that Malta - an island - is a maritime country, how do you rate its state of practical readiness in confronting, or preventing, sea hazards?

The issue which is indeed at the moment being very seriously thought about at the International Ocean Institute in Malta is the need for a Disaster Warning Centre.

The Mediterranean area is characterised by the complex movement of tectonic plates as Africa keeps slowly drifting upwards towards Europe, producing earthquakes, submarine landslides and similar phenomena which give rise to more or less destructive ocean waves.

The word 'tsunami' has now become the name for occasions when these ocean waves become catastrophic.

Many in Malta are surprised to hear about the number of tsunamis that have hit Mediterranean coasts in the past. Last April, Foreign Affairs Minister Tonio Borg recalled the ones with disastrous consequences in last century, but the most famous and catastrophic one occurred in 365 AD, with the most devastating impact on the south coast of Crete and the north coast of Egypt, with the waves travelling east as far as Cyprus and west as far as Malta.

It could be that climate change may increase the danger. Moreover, in the Mediterranean there will not be much time to prepare for the onset of water on land. That is why the IOI is in full agreement with Borg's call for the setting up of a warning system, possibly in the context of a World Ocean Technology Creative and Learning Centre.

What else should Malta be doing about these matters?

It is strange that Malta does not yet have an integrated marine policy, nor any functioning mechanism to ensure co-ordination of all sea-related activities, with their multiple and sometimes contradictory effects. The setting up of such a mechanism could be the most beneficial result of the Simshar tragedy, provided that it was really taken to heart by the government. Of course, it cannot be a substitute for the multinational institution that we should be always vigorously striving for, in such contexts as Sarkozy's Union for the Mediterranean and the European Union's holistic marine policy in incubation.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Nicole Bugeja.