Malta in June 2000.

The Islands : These are two warm islands, south of Sicily in the Mediterranean which have been receiving visitors and tourists for over a thousand years. As such the people are welcoming, there are many varieties of places to dive, eat and be entertained. Most cuisine will suit western tastes with some oriental and Indian dishes. Standards vary, but are usually quite good. This was Dogs Breath Divers second visit having dived Malta a few years ago so we had a good idea of what to expect on this visit.

Malta is served by an International airport with many carriers and all the usual facilities. The island has good public transport at reasonable prices. There are many places to stay and eat such as guest houses, hotels and all inclusive resorts. We didn't see any evidence of camping tents or caravans.

If you are diving it is well worth hiring a minibus as you will be able to criss-cross the island if your intended dive site is blown out. We hired ours from one of the rental companies at the airport, but any company should be able to deliver it for you. (We also removed and hid the rear seat in our hotel room to give more room for our dive kit, but we shouldn't tell you that.) Many petrol pumps are open 24 hours as they accept cash. It seemed strange to have hi-tec cash readers dispensing petrol from antiquated petrol pumps.

Electricity runs on 240 v like England. It’s worth noting that you are not allowed to take more than 50 Maltese pounds into the country so take your credit/debit card as there are many banks and cash dispensers. The lack of rain in summer means that much of the countryside is barren soil and rock, although there are many trees. And the continual building programme doesn't do much for the photographs. We saw several Internet Cafes during our stay.

Picture:s Um El Faroud. 'Woody' at the stern. Click to expand.

The Diving:

All the Maltese islands have numerous inlets, coves, caves, reefs and some penetrable wrecks. The water is relatively clear at 25 metres and cool in early summer (19C) which increases by one degree each summer month. The island has a long religious history and there are many churches and road-side shrines. There are even one or two shrines that you can dive.

There are 58 dive centres on the island and more resorts are opening every year so hiring equipment and getting air/nitrox fills should never be a problem - though a BS-AC Club we met did complain that the Centre they had pre-booked their dives with used rusty tanks (it won't exist long). We dived with Graham Owen of Maltaqua, an ex Australian navy diver with a wealth of knowledge and a healthy sense of humour. He trains many PADI, BS-AC and CMAS courses.

We made 12 dives during the week and covered all three islands - Comino is sandwiched between the two. The advent of spear gun and modern fishing techniques has depleted the fish stocks significantly. Older people say there were more fish in their day, and there certainly seemed to be more and larger fish on our last visit just a few years ago. It did occur to me half way through the week that we hadn't come across a single octopus. It was not until Thursday that we saw two on one dive on Comino and they were reasonably large.

In some areas there are a lot of mosses and sea grasses, which should give lots of places for young fish to hide, but to be honest they must be good at hiding. Whilst there are a good number and variety of fish, there are few large fish of any sort. It would be a good idea if the government considered banning spear gun fishing and even creating a nature reserve. There is one diving law which they strictly enforce - nothing can be removed from the sea. Not an artifact, piece of wreckage or fish. Even the Dive centres have to get license to remove trash from the sea.

We pass on our thanks to Graham Owen and Agnes of Maltaqua, and Jon of Dive Deep Blue.

Incidentally, we used our own equipment other than tanks and weights. Graham trained us on 'Torpedo 2000' DPV scooters from Maltaqua URL: www.maltaqua.com and Dive Deep Blue URL: http://www.digigate.net/deepblue which were very easy to use. Both dive centres have excellent and well deserved reputations for training and equipment. Four of us now have the PADI DPV specialty.

The DPV Tornado details are on their web site: www.torpedodpv.com and we have more dive log descriptions in the main directory on these pages: Malta, Gozo and Comino