Cruise liners at Xlend
Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt told Parliament that a buoy to facilitate the berthing of cruise liners outside Xlendi, in Gozo, will be laid in mid-2009. Its use would be limited to cruise liners up to 20,000 tons displacement and 130 metres in length.
Answering a parliamentary question by Anton Refalo (PL), Dr Gatt said cruise liner passengers would be ferried to and from land on the ships' own tenders, and would embark and disembark on the existing jetty in Xlendi Bay.
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John Joseph Borg
Feb 22nd 2009, 14:25
One question to the relevant authorities; has an application to MEPA been submitted and also has an Environment Impact Assessment been carried out to determine the extent of disturbance this activity will have on the Globally Important Seabird Colonies located on both sides of Xlendi Bay. These cliffs have been identified as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) at European Union Level by BirdLife Malta in 2004. These cliffs support two Annex 1 seabird species, namely the Cory’s and the Yelkouan Shearwaters. The National Bird, the Blue Rock Thrush also breeds along these cliffs. Cruise liners anchored outside Xlendi Bay will be detrimental to the rafting birds sitting on the water some kilometers offshore, they will also be an obstacle when the birds are flying in towards their nesting cavities in the cliff face. The introduction of electricty in the area in the 1970s led to the abandonment of nesting sites by the shearwaters from inside the bay.