The Instagram island turning into a rat-infested disaster zone

Telegraph

02-04-2025

An island hailed as the most beautiful in the Mediterranean is now a rat-infested, litter-strewn 'disaster' zone in need of urgent intervention, campaigners say.
Comino, a tiny limestone outcrop off the coast of Malta, is famed for its turquoise waters, white sand and an idyllic swimming spot known as the Blue Lagoon.
But like many parts of the Mediterranean, from the Balearics and Dubrovnik to Santorini and Mykonos, the island is buckling under extreme levels of overtourism.
Its popularity has been turbocharged by social media, with its translucent cyan shallows proving irresistible to Instagram aficionados.
Comino's profile has also been boosted by its appearance in Hollywood blockbusters, including Troy, starring Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, and The Count of Monte Cristo, which starred Guy Pearce and Richard Harris.
During the summer months, huge boats drop off up to 10,000 tourists a day on the island, which is supposed to be a protected nature reserve and a bird sanctuary.
Many holidaymakers are drawn by social media images of a lone snorkeler or swimmers floating in the cobalt waters of the bay.
Visit Malta, the country's tourism authority, says the Blue Lagoon is 'often deemed the most beautiful spot in the Mediterranean. Nestled in the channel between Comino and Cominotto, and easily accessible from both Malta and Gozo, a dip in this spectacular swim spot is an absolute must'.
But the reality is very different – hundreds of people jostling for space and packed into the bay as if it were a giant swimming pool.
Unscrupulous operators cover every inch of beach with loungers and umbrellas, while blaring loud music from makeshift bars.
The bars, known locally as kiosks, serve cocktails in hollowed-out pineapples, which tourists then discard on the ground – providing rich pickings for a burgeoning population of rats.
'An unbearable situation'
'It's an unbearable situation. Operators recruit tourists in places like Sliema (on the island of Malta) and bring them to Comino in massive boats. They pour hundreds of tourists onto the tiny beach. It gets crowded beyond what you can imagine,' said Andre Callus from Moviment Graffitti, a civil society organisation that is campaigning for radical change to the way the island is managed.
'For the people of Gozo and Malta, it's a nightmare and they don't go there anymore. Comino has been taken over by intense commercial interests. It is a very small place and yet there are 11 kiosks selling food and drink. They want to extract as much profit as possible from the island,' he added.
Moviment Graffitti staged a protest in 2022 in which they forcibly removed deckchairs and umbrellas. The demonstration garnered plenty of attention but ultimately had little effect on the over-exploitation of the island.
A study was commissioned several years ago to determine how many visitors the island could support. It has never been released, with NGOs alleging a cover-up by the authorities.
'It's a disaster. When you have 10,000 people on the island, there's noise disturbance, the vegetation gets trampled and there is all the waste that is produced, which is a very big problem,' said Mark Sultana, the chief executive officer of BirdLife Malta, a conservation organisation.
Discarded food has led to an explosion in the number of rats on the island and they are having a big impact on native wildlife.
'There's now a rodent infestation. The rats go down the burrows of birds like shearwaters and eat the eggs. They [prey] on lizards as well,' said Mr Sultana.
Its location on a migration path between Africa and Europe means that Comino is – or was – rich in birdlife, from raptors such as marsh harriers and ospreys to nightjars, short-eared owls and larks.
The letters pages of Malta's newspapers are full of comments about the lamentable state of Comino.
'Island turned circus'
The area around the Blue Lagoon looks like 'some run-down favela in some forsaken country,' one reader said recently.
Another wrote: 'There has to be a reduction in the number of kiosks and a drastic reduction in the number of visitors.'
A third disgruntled local wrote: 'This once beautiful island has been turned into a circus and I wouldn't go near it again if you paid me.'
The government of Malta now says it is determined to get to grips with the situation.
Ian Borg, the minister for tourism, did not respond to a request for an interview but has told Maltese media that he wants to reduce the number of boats allowed to anchor off the island and halve the number of daily visitors from 10,000 to 5,000.
'We must clean up Comino. We can't keep permitting operators to unload boatloads of 700 or 800 passengers at one time in such a small space. The plan is to reduce the number of passengers by half,' he told The Times of Malta.
That will entail making a list of commercial boat operators, checking how many passengers they carry and how many trips they make each day, and then imposing restrictions.
There will be a review of the number of bars that are allowed to operate and public lavatories will be installed, said Mr Borg, who is also foreign minister and deputy prime minister.
But none of this goes far enough for campaigners.
Mr Callus says the big tour boats should be banned altogether and the number of makeshift bars drastically reduced.
'We're not against having two or three kiosks with limits on the food and beverages they can sell. But Comino is a Natura 2000 site (an EU-protected wildlife reserve) which means it should have the highest level of protection.'
BirdLife Malta goes one step further and says there should be no bars at all.
Instead, food and drink could be brought in on barges each day, which would take the rubbish away each evening. There should also be a cap on the number of tourists allowed to land each day on the island.
The chaotic situation on Comino reflects wider issues in Malta, where developers and some politicians have acted with impunity, squeezing the islands for as much money as possible.
Environmental degradation and unchecked coastal development are the consequences.
'Malta being small means that politicians are very accessible and come under a lot of pressure from businesses and developers. You can go to a minister's town and have a beer with him. It puts a lot of pressure on politicians,' said Mr Sultana.
'It's good that we are finally understanding that far too many people were being allowed to go to the Blue Lagoon. Courageous decisions need to be taken. The cow has been milked for too long.'