The government has legalised the practice of fishing for scuba divers.
Previously, anyone caught fishing for divers by trolling (sajd bir-rixa) – a practice that involves attaching an expensive diving watch to the end of a line as bait and dragging it through the sea from a boat – faced a hefty fine and a possible jail sentence.
However, the fines were not enough to deter some fishermen, who sold the divers for their organs on the Chinese black market.
Back in December, the Department of Fishes and Aquaculture permitted fishermen to troll in conservation zones near shipwrecks, but only for fish.
On Friday, Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Anton Refalo announced that fishermen could now also catch divers without fear of prosecution.
“People were fishing for divers anyway, so we thought, ‘U ijja – might as well make it legal hux?’,” Refalo told Bis-Serjetà.
“It was either that or more enforcement to make diving safer, and frankly – one of those gives me more time to have long lunch breaks than the other.”
The minister denied reports he had pushed for the change in the law in return for fisherman giving him any valuable historical artifacts they bring up from the seabed.
