The silting up of the Ria Formosa has been blamed for an accident next to the Fuzeta sand bar.
A sightseeing pleasure boat with six people on board was swamped by a wave and had to be abandoned.
The British tourists and local crew were rescued by other boats whose skippers saw what happened and soon were on the scene.
The Maritime Police was not far behind and thankfully there was no loss of life.
Fishermen and maritime tourism companies in Fuzeta have been saying for years that the sand bar needs dredging as the build-up of silt and sand has been causing increasing navigation problems and endangering safety.
Concerned that it will take the death of some tourists for the authorities to take note of the increasingly dangerous situation in the Ria Formosa, those using the area to make a living stress the urgency of the dredging work which successfully been avoided for decades by the Ministry of the Environment and its local agency Polis.
Polis has managed to avoid dredging work for over ten years, prefering to use some of the many millions in its bank account to demolish houses on the Ria Formosa islands in preference to making the navigation channels clear for maritime use.
In October 2014, the skipper of a fishing boat died when thrown from his boat when it hit a sand bar in the Ria Formosa.
The Cooperativa de Viveiristas da Ria Formosa said at the time that the failure to dredge key sections of the Ria Formosa has left silt and sand to impede the flow of water and of boats in and out of the area.
The Cooperative spokesman explained at that time that applications for dredging the key navigation channels of the Ria Formosa date back to 1999 and despite promised stretching back years, the dangerous situation continues with the authorities unconcerned until there are headlines that might affect tourism.
