The ANTARES detector is a Cherenkov underwater neutrino telescope operating in the Mediterranean Sea. Its construction was completed in 2008. Even though optimised for the search of cosmic neutrinos, this telescope is also sensitive to nuclearites (massive nuggets of strange quark matter) trough the black body radiation emitted along their path. We discuss here the possible detection of non-relativistic down-going nuclearites with the ANTARES telescope and present the results of an analysis using data collected from 2009 till 2017.