Oct 2009

Club Holiday to Gozo & Malta

Marsalforn

From a seaside village frequented by a small number of prosperous fishermen, Marsalforn has now become Gozo`s Largest resort. The fishing village has gradually extended along the crescent -shaped rocky bay, a hotel, apartment blocks, souvenir shops and a few fishing boats dot the little harbor. Marselforn has a small beach, and to the Northwest, an area of coast that stll cultivates salt pans. These date from 1740 and are still in use, producing several tons of sea salt every year.

Marsalforn was a good choice of base for us, as we had chosen a self-catering holiday syle, close to local amenities. Atlantis Dive centre was a 2 minute walk from the apartments and proved a good choice for our accomodation and diving support. Being closely located, they were always available to arrange our equipment/gas needs and provide local advice.

Diving in Gozo/Malta

Before the Red Sea gained its popularity, this was the top diving destination in the mediterranean. Due to heavy over fishing and a reduction in sea life, popularity dwindled. Great efforts have been made by the islands to regain its rightful place as a top diving destination. Due to the topographic structure of the islands, they are surrounded by steep vertical drop-offs, making all the top dive sites easily reachable by shore diving. Access and parking for these sites has been made very easy, well sign posted, and at no cost to the shore diving tourist. They even contain information boards with compass navigation information on.

Dive Sites

There are more than a score of ship wrecks around the coast, and spectacular cavern and wall diving to keep the adrenalin diver happy. Marine life is also improving, mostly small reef fish, octopus, and the occasional barracuda. Our choice of diving included 5 wreck sites, 2 cavern dives, 2 wall dives with their own caves, and a small quiet inlet (also with caves) which we used as a first dive to sort out buoyancy issues.

Red Bay, South Gozo

Our most visited site was Red Bay, South Gozo, where we conducted 4 dives. Red Bay was 25 minutes drive from Marsalforn, and had the attraction of excellent access to 3 large wrecks, which lay a short distance off of a gently sloping reef, ending at a sharp wall drop-off. The wrecks we dived were the MV Xlendi, a RoRo ferry, and MV's Karwela and Cominoland, both passenger ferries. All lay on a 42m bottom, a short distance from the edge of the reef. Our tactics for all 3 of these wreck dives were similar.

The two passenger ferries were buoyed, once in the water it was a 100 metre snorkel out, then a standard shotline descent to the top of the wreck at about 34 metres. Viz was about 25 metres, so after a short descent, the wreck could be seen clearly, and it was a straight drop onto the deck. Once we had finished the dive, we swam off on a bearing back to the shore, ascended over the steep drop-off wall, and decompressed whilst exploring the reef. The reef depth varied from 3 -15m, and had ladder exit points.

The Blue Hole and the Inland Sea

On the west coast of the island was a top dive location, where many excellent dives were possible. In an area around the feature known as the Azure window, were several sites, we explored two that linked, the Blue hole and the In-Land Sea. Both sites offered fabulous opportunties for cavern exploring and vertical wall diving, with an underwater topography that was breath-taking.

At the time of our first visit, the blue hole was also frequented by a large following of dinner plate jellyfish, which made descents and ascents a watchful experience. These jellyfish were quite large bodied with very short tentacles, and were harmless. The In-Land Sea is so-called because a narrow cave tunnel through the rock connects it to the open sea. This tunnel is huge and drops to depths of 25m on the seaward side.

Marine Life

Whilst decompressing on the reefs, we had ample time to browse the gullies, nooks and crannies sheltering various sea animals. Coloured moray eels could be easily lured from their holes, shoals of rainbow coloured reef fish, and this unusual multi-coloured shrimp like creature. A night dive in Marselforn witnessed hunting octopus, demonstrating an abliity to change colour to improve its local camouflage.

Wall Dives

The area arround the Blue hole and the in-land sea was lined with sheer walls that dropped to depths of 50 metres plus. These were terraced in areas, but the sheer scale of the rock formations were awesome, and could be fully enjoyed with the excellent 25m visibility. Pocked with caves and bolder formations there was no shortage of interesting swim through opportunities, but required good buoynacy skill and dive discipline to stay within the dive plan and outside of decompression.

Conclusions

Gozo offers a wealth of great diving for all levels of experience. The divers on our trip were all at a similar level of experience (advanced) which allowed us to maximise our choice of adventurous dives for the trip. We certainly plan to return in the future, as there are many more sites we have yet to visit.

Scribe:- Andy Brown

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