Sea bathing water quality

Monitoring the quality of the sea for bathing on beaches in the Croatian part of the Adriatic is performed from mid-May to the beginning of October, or until the end of the bathing season

In the Republic of Croatia, the implementation of the Monitoring Programme for the Quality of the Sea and Inland Surface Bathing Waters is coordinated by the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development and the legal entity Hrvatske vode. The Programme is regularly implemented in seven coastal counties and specific local self-government units. Monitoring of the quality of water and the sea is performed by authorised organisations, that is, public health institutes and approved laboratories. In the 2020 season, the Programme is carried out in approximately 1130 coastal and inland sampling points primarily for the purpose of protecting the health of bathers.

According to data for 2019, the sea and bathing waters on Croatian beaches were of excellent quality at 95.6 % of the sampling points. This puts Croatia at the very top, alongside Cyprus, Austria, Malta and Greece.

Sea bathing quality assessment

Assessments and other accompanying information such as air and sea temperature, wind direction, infrastructural, recreational and catering features of the beach, are available on the website of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development.
 
The results of monitoring the quality of bathing waters and the sea at each of the sampling points included in the Programme are available to the public in real time.
 
Database on the sea quality in the Republic of Croatia
 
Sea bathing water quality at the beaches in the Republic of Croatia

The results of monitoring the sea at each sampling point are shown based on final, annual and individual quality assessments using different symbols.

The individual assessment is indicated with a coloured circle and is shown every 15 days during the season. The annual assessment is determined at the end of each monitoring (bathing) season and is indicated with a coloured triangle. The final assessment is determined at the end of each monitoring season based on sea quality results in the last and the three preceding monitoring seasons, or based on a dataset containing around 40 results per sampling point, and is indicated with a coloured square. The colours of the symbols have the following meanings:

• Blue – Excellent
• Green – Good
• Yellow – Sufficient
• Red – Poor.