Crowds return to Comino as commercial operators overwhelm Blue Lagoon

A visit to Comino on Saturday found that despite tighter controls on visitor numbers at the Blue Lagoon, overcrowding and commercial activity continue to overwhelm the protected Natura 2000 site.

A site visit by The Shift on 13 June began promisingly enough: by 9.40am, the ferry landing area for Blue Lagoon was free of the rows of deckchairs and umbrellas that once occupied it.

Instead, the landing area has been drastically reorganised following the government’s efforts to cap daily visitor numbers after last summer.

A tent at the entrance is staffed by Visit Malta and Team Blue Lagoon officials, ensuring that visitors have a valid wristband before being allowed entry. Transport Malta officials were in charge of boat traffic.

Up until around 10am, Blue Lagoon appeared better organised and less crowded than it had been a few years ago.

Whatever gains the area’s tranquillity may have gained from the landing area’s reorganisation, however, were completely offset by the failure to rein in rogue kiosk operators hawking everything from beach accessories to food to luggage storage, water sports activities, and the infamous pineapple cocktails.

The kiosks lining Blue Lagoon’s coastline offer little to no breathing room and are visually jarring compared to the rest of the rugged landscape.

Though it appears that kiosk owners are no longer allowed to play loud music, the fact that they remain in place goes directly against what then-Tourism Minister Ian Borg said about removing the kiosks last year – including, of course, a commitment to issuing a new tender for a radical redesign of the site, which never materialised.

Such a wide range of kiosks selling all sorts of services could only mean one thing: by noon, hundreds more of their potential clients would descend on Comino.

Besides Blue Lagoon, there are two well-known beaches in Comino: Santa Marija Bay and San Niklaw Bay.

Presently, those beaches are mostly used by boaters seeking to moor somewhere less crowded than Blue Lagoon. A few stray bathers could be seen making their way there throughout the morning, too.

That may at least partly explain activists’ relief over the court’s decision to annul an approved permit for a major tourism complex, which would have occupied land on both bays, though the saga is far from over since Hili Ventures, the developers behind the plans, can always resubmit fresh plans.

By 11.30am, the almost hopeful outlook for Blue Lagoon’s early morning tranquillity was all but gone.

Multiple large boats belonging to private commercial operators had begun ferrying hundreds more visitors to the landing site. Some of those visitors spent their time lounging on their vessel of choice, while others mingled freely with the rest of the visitors in Blue Lagoon.

By our count, there were at least 8 – 12 commercial boats of varying sizes docked at any given time around the entire stretch of Blue Lagoon, turning what is supposed to be a protected Natura 2000 site into one of the busiest swimming zones in the Maltese Islands.

Moviment Graffitti’s Andre Callus, actively involved in the group’s campaign against over-commercialisation in Comino, was hardly surprised by the “severe overcrowding” witnessed by The Shift.

“A so-called ‘cap’ was, just as we had immediately warned, ineffective, as it fails to address the real problem at the Blue Lagoon: unbridled commercial activity,” Callus said.

The new rules for the island allow a maximum of 12,000 people per day, with a cap of 4,000 on the beach and in the surrounding lagoon simultaneously.

Callus also noted that the system did not curb the practice of large boats ferrying tourists from coastal localities such as Buġibba and Sliema to the fragile environment of the Blue Lagoon.

“The result of this unwillingness to curb commercial operations within a nature reserve is that, already in May and June, the Blue Lagoon and its surroundings are packed with thousands of tourists, causing serious harm to the area’s ecology and undermining the public’s enjoyment of this place,” Callus added.

Consensus among activists on Comino has long been established. They argue that the government must outright prohibit mass tourism operations in Comino.

Though several tourism ministers serving in the Labour Party’s administration from 2013 onwards have promised to publish studies to quantify how many visitors the islet can accommodate, one such study, finalised years ago, remains unpublished.