Il-Baħar ta' Madwar Filfla — 1 nautical mile no-entry zone around Filfla

The sea within one nautical mile of the islet of Filfla is a restricted-access area: unless authorised, no vessel, boat or other craft may be berthed, moored or anchored there, and no person may swim or carry out any kind of activity connected with underwater diving or sea sport. Spearfishing is caught twice over - a spearfisher is in the water, and breath-hold spearfishing is underwater diving - and the instrument's only carve-out is for “activities connected with fishing carried out directly from a vessel, boat or any other craft”. Line fishing from a boat is therefore exempt; taking fish while in the water is not. The restriction was made by Government Notice 173 of 1990 under the Berthing Regulations (Legal Notice 117 of 1975), superseding the total ban of Local Notice to Mariners 16 of 1987. This is an authorisation regime rather than an absolute closure, so access is possible only if authorised. The area is carried in the World Database on Protected Areas as “Il-Baħar ta' Madwar Filfla”, designation “No Berthing Zone/No Entry Zone except for Fisheries”, designated 1990, 12.97 km² - a one-nautical-mile buffer of the islet. That four-word register label is a database designation name, not the legal text: the exemption it gestures at is limited to fishing carried out directly from a vessel, so it does not open the area to spearfishing. Provenance, honestly stated: Government Notice 173 of 1990 is not published in Malta's online consolidated corpus - the Berthing Regulations were never carried into the current subsidiary-legislation series and Maltese government hosts block automated access - so the wording above is quoted from Furlani, Gauci, Devoto and Schembri (2019), “Filfla: A Case Study of the Effect of Target Practice on Coastal Landforms”, and corroborated by the protected-area register entry above and by the Environment and Resources Authority's own February 2023 conservation measure CM_R_3, which undertakes to review “existing regulations on the conservation status of reefs and associated species around the islet of Filfla” by 2025 and to update or enhance them by 2027. Filfla was a naval target range until 1971 and unexploded ordnance remains on and around the islet. The Filfla Nature Reserve Act (Cap. 323) is a separate instrument: it protects only the surface area of the island and restricts landing to ministerial permission, and does not regulate the water column.