Tivat has again entered the peak nautical season without effective control over one of the most visible and commercially valuable parts of its maritime space. Across the Tivat Bay, vessels — especially yachts — continue to anchor freely in multiple locations, including areas close to beaches and even places that interfere with normal navigation routes. For a municipality that hosts one of the Adriatic’s best-known marina brands and wants to position itself as a higher-value nautical destination, the failure is not cosmetic. It is a governance, safety, environmental and revenue problem.
The issue is not a lack of local ambition. Tivat Municipality has for years sought to take over management of nautical anchorages in its part of the bay, with the aim of protecting the marine ecosystem, bringing order to anchoring zones and eventually creating a more professional coastal-management model. Last year, after a public tender, the municipality signed an agreement with the Public Enterprise for Coastal Zone Management, Morsko dobro, to manage one anchorage in Tivat Bay.
Yet the contract has still not moved into practical implementation. The reason lies in institutional change at state level. In the meantime, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs took over responsibility for the management of anchorages, while new legislation and the reorganisation of maritime institutions changed the procedural framework. The result is familiar in Montenegro’s coastal economy: a local initiative was started, a contract was signed, studies and design work were prepared, but the actual operating model has stalled just as the commercial season began.
That delay means Tivat has likely lost another nautical season in which anchoring could have been regulated, charged and linked to environmental services. Instead, yachts and other vessels continue to use the bay without a clear charging system, without consistent allocation of anchoring areas and without the level of waste control expected in a premium marine destination.
The financial loss is only one part of the problem. The larger issue is that unregulated anchoring damages the very asset on which Boka’s nautical economy depends: a safe, clean and attractive marine environment. Anchors and chains can destroy underwater meadows of Posidonia oceanica, a protected seagrass that plays an important role in marine biodiversity, seabed stability and coastal water quality. Poorly controlled anchoring also increases the risk of wastewater discharge from vessels, while solid waste from anchored boats can end up directly in the sea.
This makes the issue more serious than a dispute over fees. Tivat is effectively allowing high-value nautical traffic to use public maritime space without applying the basic operating standards that serious Mediterranean destinations have long treated as normal: designated anchorage zones, user registration, payment, waste reception, navigation control and environmental monitoring.
Hydrographic studies prepared by Morsko dobro have already mapped three safe anchorage zones in Tivat Bay. The first is located between Sveti Marko Island and the line toward Porto Montenegro. The second is positioned toward Belane Cove. The third runs along the eastern side of Sveti Marko Island toward Obala Đuraševića. Tivat signed an agreement for the first of these locations, but the wider administrative shift has left implementation in limbo.
The irony is clear. Tivat has the market, the vessels, the demand, the location and the environmental urgency. What it does not yet have is a functioning management structure. That gap is particularly damaging because the municipality has already prepared parts of the technical documentation, including a conceptual design, approval from the chief city architect and steps toward the environmental impact assessment procedure. The missing element is no longer the recognition of the problem; it is execution.
The Ministry of Maritime Affairs has acknowledged the scale of the failure. Minister Filip Radulović has said Montenegro was among the rare Mediterranean countries without marked and established nautical anchorages, calling that both a maritime-safety weakness and a significant loss of public revenue. The comparison with neighbouring markets is uncomfortable. In Croatia, anchoring and mooring are much more systematically regulated and monetised. Montenegro, by contrast, has allowed vessels to anchor in valuable coastal waters without a comparable payment and service model.
The ministry’s proposed direction is logical: establish anchorages, create a digital platform through which vessel users can register and pay for anchoring, and introduce services for receiving wastewater and solid waste from vessels. That would turn an uncontrolled seasonal problem into a managed maritime product. It would also allow the state and local operators to collect revenue while improving environmental protection.
The new legal framework is meant to help. Under the new Law on Ports and the Law on Maritime Navigation Safety, anchorages are now classified as state, nautical and port anchorages. Nautical anchorages can be economically exploited, not through a classic concession model, but through a system of approvals. Interested operators may apply to the Port Authority with conceptual solutions for the use of specific anchorage locations, while maritime-safety studies for Boka Kotorska have already identified sites that can be formally registered and used.
That framework could be a step forward if it is implemented quickly. It gives the state a way to avoid long concession procedures while still allowing controlled economic use. It also creates space for municipal companies, private operators or specialised service providers to manage anchorages under defined environmental and operational conditions. But the framework will only matter if approvals are issued, locations are marked, payment systems are launched and enforcement becomes visible on the water.
For Tivat, the natural operating partner remains the local Komunalno preduzeće, which the municipality has considered for anchorage management together with the planned municipal marina for local berths at Donje Seljanovo. That approach could allow Tivat to integrate anchoring, municipal berths, waste collection, service logistics and local coastal management inside one practical model. It would also keep a larger share of value in the municipality rather than allowing unregulated usage to remain effectively free.
The strategic issue is especially sensitive because Tivat is not an ordinary coastal town. It is already positioned as one of Montenegro’s key nautical and luxury-tourism nodes, with Porto Montenegro giving the bay international visibility. That brand creates expectations. Visitors arriving by yacht are not only tourists; they are high-spending users of infrastructure, restaurants, hotels, maintenance services, fuel, transport and local experiences. But premium nautical tourism requires premium governance. A bay filled with freely anchored yachts, weak enforcement and uncertain waste control sends the opposite signal.
There is also a real opportunity cost. Regulated anchorages could create a recurring seasonal revenue stream from vessels that already use the bay. The fees themselves would not transform public finances, but they could fund waste reception, monitoring, marine-protection measures, local service jobs and better maritime order. More importantly, they would introduce the principle that use of sensitive public maritime space carries both a price and a responsibility.
The environmental dimension is likely to become more important as Montenegro moves closer to EU standards. Waste reception from vessels, control of marine pollution and protection of sensitive habitats are not optional elements of a modern coastal economy. Captain Goran Idrizović, director general of the Directorate for Maritime Safety, has made clear that future operators of nautical anchorages will need plans for receiving liquid and solid waste from vessels, in line with relevant European rules. That moves the issue from local improvisation into regulatory alignment.
The current situation therefore exposes a wider weakness in Montenegro’s coastal management. The country has successfully attracted marina investment, luxury real estate, yacht traffic and higher-value tourism demand, but parts of the regulatory infrastructure still lag behind the market. When vessels can anchor freely in sensitive and commercially valuable waters, the state is effectively subsidising private use of a public asset while carrying the environmental risk.
Tivat’s lost nautical season should be treated as a warning. The question is not whether anchorages should be managed. That has already been answered by the scale of the problem, the mapped locations, the municipality’s preparations and the state’s own legislative changes. The real question is whether Montenegro can move from recognition to implementation before another season passes.
A functioning anchorage model in Tivat Bay would not be complicated in concept. It would require clearly marked zones, digital registration, transparent pricing, waste-reception services, navigation enforcement, environmental monitoring and a defined operator with responsibility on the water. Such a system would protect Posidonia, reduce safety risks, create a revenue stream and align the bay’s management with the premium image Montenegro wants to sell.
The delay has already cost Tivat another season. The larger cost would be allowing the same governance gap to become normal. In a country that wants tourism revenue to move from volume toward value, unmanaged anchoring in one of its most attractive bays is not a small administrative failure. It is a test of whether Montenegro can manage the assets that make its coast commercially valuable.
