Fish farming in Malta is big business. However, the effects of intensive coastal fish farming on the marine environment are likely to be harmful. There is an undoubted environmental cost to the aquaculture industry that needs to be properly controlled. While it can be a good alternative to fishing because it reduces the pressure on wild stocks, it must be done in the right way.

Some aquaculture operations, especially those producing carnivorous fish, lead to a number of environmental problems ranging from destruction of the surrounding habitat to pollution from use of excessive feed and chemical waste as a result of medicinal products added to the cages, pesticides or even anti-fouling agents used on the nets. That we then go on to eat the product and to swim near it is surely too disgusting to contemplate.

Aquaculture operations need to be properly managed in order to mitigate their negative environmental effects. However, the government agency charged with regulating this area of the marine environment – Mepa – is unable to say whether fish farms in the south of Malta are observing the permit conditions for their operation.

Worryingly, the regulator is unable even to say whether the fish farms have been established in the locations designated under their permits because, as a spokesman said: “We are still working on obtaining assistance from other entities that can help us determine the exact coordinates of the respective pens.”

Mepa’s professionalism has long been in doubt. But not even to know whether fish farms have been established in the designated area when modern means of marine location systems are so advanced and easily available stretches credulity. By its own admission, the environment watchdog is unable to say whether the fish pans belonging to Malta Fish Farming Ltd and Fish and Fish Ltd have been located too close to shore because it does not know exactly where they are.

This newspaper has been seeking answers on the operations of the fish-farms in the south of the island for two months, ever since reports were rife of pollution continuing to be found in the once pristine bay of il-Kalanka in the limits of Delimara. Bathers reported that when a slick of greasy, white foam hit the bay, there was a stench of fish in their hair and on their skin. There were complaints of a similar odious slick at St Paul’ Bay.

While the connection of the slicks with the nearby fish farms seems to lead to the logical deduction that they are to be probably responsible, Mepa claims that “the source is not known”. It is notable that pollution at il-Kalanka was first reported five years ago and remains “unsolved” by Mepa to this day.

The circumstantial evidence that the cause of this marine pollution at St Paul’s Bay and Delimara is emanating from the same root cause – fish farms – seems persuasive. It is time that a government claiming to care about the state of the environment takes the essential steps to ensure its regulatory authority is competent to act and identifies the cause.

Moreover, the government must also exercise the necessary political will to ensure that the fish farm companies are fully in line with their permits and are compelled to move to marine areas where they are unable to contaminate the seas around them with the stench and slurry that now afflicts so much of our marine coastal bathing areas.

With their potential impact on public health and on Malta’s tourism industry, the need for action is imperative.