Sliema’s Sea Turns Green: Algae Bloom Shocks Swim Zone Just as Summer Season Kicks Off

Watch: Large patches of ‘algae’ spotted in Sliema swim zone

Sliema’s postcard-perfect coastline looked more like a green smoothie this morning after overnight winds pushed thick rafts of floating algae into the island’s most popular urban swim zone. Social media lit up before 7 a.m. with aerial clips showing a fluorescent slick stretching from the Font Għadir lido all the way to the Ferries, forcing regulars to trade their sunrise dip for a WhatsApp debate on what, exactly, they were looking at.

“At first I thought someone had spilled paint,” said 68-year-old Nenu Fsadni, who has clocked 9,000 consecutive morning swims since 1983. “But when I got closer it felt like swimming through wet lettuce. I turned back—my wife would kill me if I came home smelling like eks.”

The Environment & Resources Authority confirmed the bloom is a “naturally occurring mucilaginous macro-algae” triggered by a sudden spike in late-spring nutrients and this week’s warm, still seas. In layman’s terms: Mother Nature’s own kale smoothie, super-sized by last weekend’s fireworks rain of phosphate-rich dust that settled on the water after the eve-of-Imnarja petards.

Still, that scientific reassurance is cold comfort to café owners along the Sliema front who rely on June’s pre-summer trade. By 10 a.m., sunbeds at Surfside lay empty while tourists scrolled other beaches on their phones. “We lost 80 covers at breakfast,” manager Claire Grech sighed, watching staff hose down the promenade. “People see one video and assume the whole island is toxic.”

Local lore vs. lab report
Ask any Sliema elder and they’ll recall similar “weed years” in 1974 and 1997, when fishermen christened the phenomenon ħabaq il-baħar (“sea basil”) and carted it off in potato sacks to dry on roof tops, later burning it as fertiliser in Gozo tomato fields. That frugal ingenuity is remembered fondly; today’s generation simply tags the council and waits.

Mayor Graziella Attard Previ appealed for calm, reminding residents that the algae is harmless to humans and already breaking up under today’s north-westerly breeze. “Our cleanup crews are skimming surface nets, but nature usually disperses it within 48 hours,” she told reporters. “We ask swimmers to avoid the area today and check real-time water-quality updates on the Bathing Water Malta app.”

Yet the optics could not come at a worse time. Malta just launched its €2.5 million “Summer Like Nowhere Else” campaign aimed at Italian week-trippers, with Sliema’s rocky terraces featured in every Instagram carousel. Tour operators fear the footage will be weaponised by competing Mediterranean destinations still smarting from 2023’s marine-heatwave headlines.

Environmental NGOs are using the bloom to renew calls for better agricultural-runoff controls. “The algae itself isn’t dangerous, but it’s a red flag for nutrient overload,” said Alfred E. Baldacchino, former ERA manager. “Every fertilised lawn in central Malta drains into the Great Fault system and out to sea here. If we keep feeding the water, we’ll keep feeding the slime.”

Community spirit, however, is already bubbling up. By noon, volunteers from the NGO Żibel had kayaked 30 kg of algae into biodegradable bags, while bathers at Exiles improvised a floating “rubbish boom” made of pool noodles and mosquito nets. Someone even started a Spotify playlist titled “Algae Palooza” featuring vintage Gaħan folk songs remixed with lo-fi beats—Maltese humour at its finest.

Even Nenu Fsadni refused to stay land-locked for long. Sporting a brand-new pair of goggles, he waded back in at 1 p.m. “I’ve swum through oil slicks, jellyfish invasions and once a whole sofa cushion,” he laughed. “A bit of green won’t stop me. This is the sea that raised us; she can misbehave, but she’s still ours.”

As the afternoon ferry to Valletta glided past the last visible slick, passengers leaned over the rail, not in disgust but in curiosity—proof that Malta’s relationship with the Mediterranean remains a turbulent, occasionally slimy, but ultimately unbreakable love affair.