Comino
Comino's Delight
A quiet, shallow cavern run along Comino's northern shore, all sunbeams and swarming bream, with almost nothing written about it online.
Sea conditions
Excellent right now
Flat, sheltered and calm
Forecast for the site, updated 02:29 AM
- Waves
- n/a
- Wind
- 4 km/h
- S, gusts 8
- Swell
- n/a
- Sea temp
- n/a
- air 25 °C
Next 7 days
Sunrise 06:47, sunset 19:05
Exposed to wind and swell from: N (0°), NE (45°), NW (315°). North-facing, so a northerly or a north-westerly puts swell straight into the bay and the caverns start to surge. Diveable and pleasant in the summer north-westerly only when it is light. Southerly and south-easterly winds leave it flat. Best season: June to October, with the calmest mornings before the day-boat fleet arrives.
The dive
Comino's Delight is the sort of name that gets passed between skippers rather than printed in guidebooks. The listings agree on the numbers (about six metres for most of it, twelve if you drop off the rock into the sand) and on the character: a cliff-backed bay on the north side of the island with cavern mouths worked into the base of the headlands. Beyond that, the published record thins out fast, so treat this write-up as a sketch rather than a map.
What divers who know it describe is a gentle loop. You drop into bright water over broken rock, follow the cliff foot until the wall opens into a chamber, and in at least one of these the roof breaks the surface so you can pop up into a pool of daylight inside the rock. Come back out, work along the next headland, and there is usually a second, darker overhang worth a torch.
The fish are the reason people bother. Bream here have long since worked out that divers mean entertainment, and they will shoal around your mask in numbers that feel faintly ridiculous. Under the rocks, the usual Maltese cast: an octopus folded into a crack, a grouper that watches you from a shelf and slides back in when you get close.
Because it is shallow and sheltered from the prevailing summer breeze only some of the time, this is a good second dive of the day rather than a headline act. Bring a torch, keep your fins off the algae, and enjoy the fact that you probably will not see another group.
- Surfacing inside a rock chamber with daylight coming through the roof
- Bream that mob you from the moment you hit the water
- Shallow enough that gas, not nitrogen, ends the dive
- Almost no other divers, ever
Typical plan
A single tank, no-stop loop. Drop at the western headland, run east along the cliff foot at five to seven metres, put your head into the first chamber and surface in the rock pool if it is calm, then continue to the second overhang before turning. Maximum around twelve metres if you slide off the rock onto the sand. Sixty minutes on air is easy, nitrox buys nothing here, and a torch plus an SMB are the only extras worth carrying.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Broken rock at the cliff foot5 m deep · 25 m out
- 2Cavern with a surfacing rock pool inside the headland7 m deep · 60 m out
- 3Sand and algae debris on the chamber floor10 m deep · 105 m out
- 4Second, darker overhang under the next headland11 m deep · 145 m out
- 5Posidonia fringe on the way back7 m deep · 190 m out
Coralline limestone rock and boulder debris at the cliff foot, giving way to coarse sand and algae litter inside the chambers.
Who you might meet
Saddled bream
Almost always · Kaħlija
Two-banded seabream
Almost always · Ħaddiema
Damselfish
Almost always · Kaħlija
Encrusting sponges
Almost always · Sponża
Ornate wrasse
Almost always · Tirda tal-passa
Common octopus
Often · Qarnita
Cardinalfish
Often · Sultan iċ-ċawl
Spiny starfish
Often · Stilla tal-baħar
Dusky grouper
Sometimes · Ċerna
Mediterranean moray
Sometimes · Morina
Getting in and staying safe
In practice a boat dive, run out of the Blue Lagoon moorings or direct from Ċirkewwa. The clifftop above is walkable from the Comino paths but there is no ladder, no steps and no sensible way to get a set of twins down to the water, which is why the shore rating is unkind. Comino has no roads, no car parking and only seasonal kiosks near Santa Marija Bay and the Blue Lagoon, so bring water, shade and everything else you need. Toilets are seasonal and limited to the main bays.
- Overhead environment in the caverns: silt-out and disorientation if you fin badly
- Daylight zone only, no line, no penetration beyond sight of the entrance
- Swell wrapping around the northern headlands, uncomfortable inside a chamber
- Boat traffic on the surface in summer, deploy an SMB
- Very little published information, so no reliable emergency exit knowledge
- Sharp, urchin-covered rock at the waterline
- Mauve stinger jellyfish in late summer
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Further reading: Calypso SAC, cavern diving north of the Blue Lagoon · VisitMalta attraction listing, Comino's Delight · PADI dive site index for Comino