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.

This course is NOT a course in advanced diving opposite to what the name seems to suggest. It is still very much a beginners course but with some more elements added to the dives. Overall you can say that the Open Water course focuses on teaching the skills and basics of diving and this course is more about the experience of the dive.

Course structure and elective dives

The course is very differently structured compared to the Open Water course. The training is done during 5 Adventure Dives. 2 dives are compulsory – the Deep Dive and the Navigation Dive. The student then gets to choose 3 dives from a number of different dives. Options include:

• Underwater digital photography
• Boat diving
• Peak performance buoyancy
• Multilevel and computer diving
• Wreck diving
• Night diving
• Diving with underwater scooters
• Underwater Naturalist
• Project Aware
• Dry suit dive
• Search and recovery
• Nitrox
• Videography

A diver who has done 3 adventure dives can get certified as an Adventure Diver (which means absolutely nothing – a total waste of money). Upon completion of 5 adventure dives you get certified as an Advanced Open Water Diver and you are allowed to dive down to 30 meters.

Theory for PADI Advanced Open Water Diver

There is no written test for the AOW. Prior to each dive you read the chapter in the manual, complete the knowledge review and your instructor will go through the results and fill in any gaps you may have. That’s it. Often, unfortunately, this is sloppily done and the theoretical part is more of an excersise in order to not violate PADI standards. I think this is one of the major weaknesses of this course but more about that later.

Pool training

There is no pool training for AOW – everything is done in open water.

The Adventure Dives

So – the core of the course is the actual diving. This is not necessarily bad and correctly executed it will be a very good course in spite of the really weak theoretical requirements. The deep dive actually takes you down to about 30 meters and you get to do some pretty good skills that illustrates the problems with diving deeper.

The navigation dive can be good but is often very much a waste of time – it depends a lot on your instructor. Many students go through this without actually understanding why the should swim in a square or along a line. I think this is important but often this dive is simply ticked off in order to meet certification requirements. Not good.

Then we have the elective dives and here the quality varies greatly. The right instructor can make any dive very good but here you often see the lack of experience in instructors. I think that the general problem with AOW is that it is required much more experience from the instructors side than the OW. It is surprising how little some instructors know about decompression theory, marine life or history of the wrecks they are diving. Also – the PADI standards for these dives are ludicrously basic – for the wreck dive for example it is enough to simply swim around a wreck. What kind of development is that?

A good instructor and careful choice of the dives can make an excellent course. I like the triple Night diving, Multilevel diving and Peak Performance Buoyancy for example. If you live in colder countries Dry Suit is good. With a good instructor Naturalist can be excellent but it can be incredibly bad with the wrong one. Avoid Boat diving, Project Aware at any cost.

Conclusion

This is very much a hit and miss. I think new divers should do this course and it gives much more flexibility when going on dive trips. But beware – it is often taught by inexperienced instructors who are unable to do anything but carrying out the PADI standards which are way too lenient. You can pass through this course without actually learning anything and this is scary – I think that it is a big responsibility to dive to 30 metres and many people who are certified are not capable of doing this safely.

I disagree with the lack of a written test and I think it is done like this so it will be easier to sell. Perhaps this course should be more compared to “diving with a coach”. My conclusion is that most rookie instructors are unable to do a good AOW course – it takes lots of experience to be able to flesh out the poor standards and the course is often adapted to suit logistics rather than the students own needs.

So – do the course, but beware. Talk to your instructor beforehand and try to figure out if he or she actually knows anything about the topic they are teaching. Sounds scary? Welcome to the Scuba Diving Industry where you can go from total beginner to high ranking PADI Instructor in 8 months…

One wreck that is much more than a rumour is the Blenheim Bomber. She is very famous and has appeared in numerous dive magazines and it is one of the classic dives of Malta. Being a bomb plane she is much bigger than the fighter and the wreck is not upside down so it makes for an interesting dive. This plane was ditched in the sea after being damaged by German aircraft with no loss of human life.

Compared to the Bristol Beaufighter this is a deeper and darker dive. The bottom is not as bright and the visibility often less good. That said – she is very interesting. Unfortunately parts of her have been stolen by wreck looters and she deteriorates rather quickly. The depth is a problem – 42 metres is very deep for most divers and ascent and decent along a line requires good diving skills.

If you get a chance you should do this dive. She gets 4 stars in my rating which might seem low and she probably has scored higher but the stealing of parts has damaged the overall impression for me.

The dive site is huge and not easily navigated so a compass is strongly recommended. You should also beware of the currents which can be rather strong from time to time.

Another magic feature of Ghar Lapsi is the cavern which is one of the prettiest in Malta. I have included some photos taken during the winter 2005. It is not very large and a tight squeeze in some places but well worth the effort. I really like to see the light falling in which creates superb effects.

The dive entry point at Ghar Lapsi

I give this site 4 stars – highy recommended.

The Bristol Beaufighter is located just of Exiles in Sliema, Malta on 37 metres depth. Visibility is often good and it is only a short boatride out to the wreck. Unfortunately she lies upside down but it is still an excellent dive. On a good day you can start to see the dark shadow of the wreck at 10 meters depth and the deeper you go the clearer the gets.

With only sand around her it is a natural meeting point for marine life and seems to be some sort of breeding station for morays. During one dive I spotted no less than 7 morays within one square metre!

The history around the sinking is rather straightforward:

“On 17th March 1943 at 1125 hours nine Beaufighters of No 272 squadron took off to escort nine Beauforts of No 39 Squadron on a shipping strike of Point Stelo. At 1138 hours Beau fighter ‘N,’ with Sgt Donald Frazee at the controls and Sgt  Sandery as observer, began to vibrate violently and lost speed rapidly. There was no option but to ditch the aircraft and this was accomplished at 100mph in a slight swell about 1000 yards off Dragonara Point, Sliema. As all this took place close to shore, persons watching informed Fighter Control but Maltese dghajsas reached the crew some five minutes before rescue launch HSL 166 arrived on the spot. The air crew was transferred to the launch.”

(Extract from the book ‘Call Out’, a wartime diary of air/sea rescue operations at Malta by Frederick R. Galea).

I personally find this dive very nice and it gets four stars in my books. Due to the depth and the fact that there are no options but to descend and ascend along a shotline a good level of experience is required.

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