The summer swimming spot of Birzebbuga has been hit by yet another oil spill this week and tests are currently underway to establish whether the Qajjenza area is fit for bathing.

This is the third time that the town has been hit by slicks this summer, and it seems to be a repeat occurrence. Outspoken MP Marlene Farrugia took to Facebook yesterday to ask a number of questions as to why this is happening and what is taking so long to identify the culprits.

Malta has pristine bathing water quality and we have striven to get the coveted Blue Flag status at our major natural beaches as well as other man made ones. This is all positive, however, it is useless to do so if we continue to be faced with slicks around parts of the islands.

Some might argue that the focus should be on the Blue Flag beaches and natural parks beaches, but we must look after our entire coastline. There are many spots around Malta and Gozo, including the Blue Flag beaches that are saturated with cigarette ends and plastic utensils. These include Armier, Riviera, Golden Bay and more.

It seems that we might be headed to a point where smoking might be banned on beaches. Australia has a good formula. Pocket ashtrays are given out to beach goers who then dispose of them when they leave. Brighton Beach in the UK is contemplating becoming a smoke free zone.  Something clearly needs to be done.  A simple exercise of seeing home many you can collect in the space of a couple of minutes should be enough to convince anyone of the extent of the problem. It seems that while the beach authorities provide separated waste bins, which are regularly cleared throughout the day, some people – foreigners and Maltese included – seem to find it far too difficult to pick up their rubbish and dispose of it properly.

While the cigarette butts might look unsightly on the shore, the danger they pose and the damage that they cause to underwater marine life is unquantifiable. One has to take a look underwater to see just how many beer cans, cigarette butts and bits of plastic there are in the sea and on the shallow seabed. But if one were to take a look deeper, in the realm of scuba diving, the sheer extent of what we are throwing into our seas takes on a whole new proportion. Virtually every scrap of litter that we dump in the winter and summer, at some point, ends up at the bottom of the sea. And with that, our reefs and marine life are systematically killed off, slowly but surely.

While oil slicks on the surface are unsightly, pose a health problem and deprive bathers of a dip in the sea, we need to realise that a we need a far reaching strategy to keep up with the sheer volume of trash that pollutes our waters. Failure to do so would not only result in losing our coveted blue flag status. It will result in more illnesses, higher cancer rates and a barren landscape under water. We must act now.