Italians Plan Luxury Yacht Ban to Protect Marine Life From Anchors

The footballer Wayne Rooney and his wife, Coleen McLoughlin, weighed anchor there last summer to celebrate their wedding. Jennifer Lopez used its crystal-clear waters to escape the paparazzi on a super-yacht owned by Dolce & Gabbana. But the Italian riviera's reputation as a millionaires' summer playground could be at risk after the Liguria region announced plans to ban boats from dropping anchor along its coast.

Liguria's environment councilor, Franco Zunino, says that boats anchoring in secluded coves are destroying the riviera's Posidonia seagrass meadows, home to a wide variety of marine fauna including seahorses, starfish and wrasse, and identified in an EU habitats directive.

Boats are already banned from dropping anchor in front of the exclusive resort of Portofino. Under the plans, 26 new sites from the French border to neighboring Tuscany will be off limits to vessels over five meters (16ft) - "practically all of them", according to the National Association of Shipbuilders.

The association likened the plan to "changing the highway code at every [regional] border".

Yacht owners including national football coach Marcello Lippi attacked the ban. "Throwing down anchor in a beautiful little cove is part of the pleasure of boating," he told Corriere della Sera.

The region is weighing up land-controlled "intelligent buoys" used in Greece and Spain that allow boats to moor without damaging the seabed.

Giorgio Devoto, the mayor of Portofino, said this would compromise the coast's natural beauty: "It would be a huge mess and would ruin the views."

But the news isn't all bad for the glitterati, who this summer may choose to head to Sardinia, where the new governor, Ugo Cappellacci, has announced plans to scrap a "luxury tax" levied on large yachts and private planes.

Introduced by his center-left predecessor in 2006, the tax applies to yachts over 14 meters that moor in the island's ports, with levies of up to €15,000 (£14,000) for 60-meter super-yachts. The Italian prime minister and villa owner Silvio Berlusconi is among those who will benefit from the tax break planned by Cappellacci, who is the son of his tax adviser.