Independent Scuba

Comino Caves

Malta and Gozo has a relative large number of sea caves which has earned the islands a somewhat overinflated reputation as a cave diving destination. Most of these caves are in reality caverns or swim throughs and they are also very nice and relatively easy accessible for most divers. Among  the most famous such dives are Comino Caves or Santa Marija Caves as they are also called.

Caves or caverns?

Just to clarify my point of view – the difference between a cave dive and a cavern dive is that you can always see the exit and some daylight during a cavern dive. This is not the case during a cave dive which is one reason why cave diving is much more dangerous and requires a more redundant set-up.

Comino

Comino is located between Malta and Gozo and it is a popular dive site. Boat is the only way to access the dive sites so it is a bit less crowded than other sites such as Um el Faroud. The bad thing here is that there are loads and loads of tourists coming up on boats from Malta for the day. They are often taken around Comino in speed boats and the speed boat drivers are very reckless and have no concept at all that it might not be a good idea to hover above divers or stay away from an inflated SMB. All in all – on a good day Comino is absolutely beautiful.

Diving Comino Caves

So on to the dive. It is in fact a very easy dive with a maximum depth of 12 metres. One of the highlights of the dive is experienced just when you jump in and descend onto the sandy bottim below you at 6-7 metres. There are thousands of bream here and they have beed fed by divers and visiting tourists for what must be hundreds of fish generations. As soon as they see a diver they swim up to you to see if you have any bread. If you do you will have so much fish around you so you can’t even see your buddies. Biologically correct? Probably not. Fun? Certainly.

The caverns themselves are extremely nice – remember to go slowly and it is nice with a torch. A camera is also a good idea – you can take some amazing photos here. There is not so much life in the caverns themselves but it is a magic feeling being in them. The only drawback is that they are actually quite small. Any diver with a bit of experience (15-20 dives) can easily do these caves as you have access to the surface except for a few metres, also in the cavern. After exiting you swim around the edge of Comino and you are back with the fish in the bay.  Usually this takes about 30 minutes or so – it is almost difficult to do a really long dive here.

I really like this dive because of it’s simplicity. The cavern is great and the breams very nice to look at. The boat traffic is a big problem – it is not only unsafe it also creates lots of noise which kills the atmosphere quite a bit. The caves are also a bit too small if one should be picky. All in all this is a four star dive in my books.