Elephant Rock
A natural limestone arch with a thirty-metre tunnel running through the headland behind it, all of it in six metres of water and lit like a stage set.
CaveSea conditions
Stay dry right now
Sea is up (3.2 m NW) · Fresh WNW wind (58 km/h) · Gusts to 96 km/h
Done for today. Tomorrow: not looking good. Best it gets is 24 at 17:00: Sea is up (1.3 m NW)
Forecast for the site, updated 19:45 · Models disagree
Measured at Ċirkewwa (4.2 km away, 20:29): 63 km/h from WNW, gusts 71. The next hours lean on it.
- Waves
- 3.2 m
- from NW, biggest 4.0
- Wind
- 58 km/h
- WNW, gusts 96
- Swell
- 0.5 m
- 10 s period
- Sea temp
- 22 °C
- air 18 °C
Hour by hour
Next 7 days
0 3.2 m46 W
0 3.0 m45 WNW
55 0.9 m14 W
87 0.4 m13 ESE
81 0.5 m12 E
76 0.5 m18 NNW
83 0.5 m15 SW
Sunrise 06:25, sunset 17:06
Waves: Copernicus Med-Waves 4 km + MFWAM 8 km + EWAM 5 km + ECMWF WAM 9 km. Wind: ICON-2I 2 km + ECMWF IFS 9 km + ICON-EU 7 km + UKMO 10 km + ARPEGE 11 km. Read a few km out on the side the site is open to, then blended.
Exposed to wind and swell from: E (90°), NE (45°), SE (135°). Sheltered from the south-west, which is why it works on days when the Lantern Point sites are closed. The flip side is that anything with east in it puts swell straight onto this shore and surge into the tunnel. Currents are generally light and variable. Visibility is typically twenty to forty metres, often around thirty. Best season: May to October, with the tunnel best lit around the middle of the day.
The dive
Elephant Rock earns its name from a lump of coralline limestone that has weathered into something with a convincing trunk and head, arching out of the sea off Comino's eastern shore. It has an eight-metre span and photographs beautifully from a boat, but the real attraction sits behind it.
The Santa Marija Tunnel is a straight passage about thirty metres long that cuts through the headland, with its entrance at around six metres. The depth barely changes from one end to the other, which makes it one of the least intimidating overhead swims anywhere in the islands: you can see daylight at both ends for most of the route. Take a torch anyway, because the walls are where the interest is. Sponges, bryozoans and small corals encrust the sides in colours that simply do not appear in ambient light.
Outside the tunnel the ground is sandy with thin patches of Posidonia, and big boulders piled against the shore create swim-throughs and overhangs. Fish numbers are modest in the tunnel itself, then pick up at the entrances where chromis and bream mill about. Grouper, octopus, moray and the occasional Mediterranean parrotfish work the boulder field, and a slow diver can find plenty on the sand.
It is rated for all levels, which is fair for the site as a whole, but the tunnel is still an overhead environment. Treat it like one, go in a sensible order, and do not enter it if there is swell running: this shore takes weather from the east.
- A thirty-metre tunnel you can swim in six metres of water
- Sponge and bryozoan colour on the tunnel walls once a torch goes on
- The arch itself, one of the better-looking rock features left in the islands
- A dive that works when the south-westerly has closed everything else
Typical plan
Shallow and relaxed. Drop beside the arch, work the boulders at four to six metres, then run the tunnel one buddy pair at a time with torches on, keeping your fins off the floor. Come out the far side, loop the sand and seagrass to a maximum of ten to fifteen metres and return. Air is plenty, an hour is normal, and the only real kit requirement beyond a torch is an SMB for the boat-traffic surface.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Elephant Rock arch, roughly 8 m span2 m deep · under the boat
- 2Santa Marija Tunnel entrance6 m deep · 25 m from the boat
- 3Tunnel walls encrusted with sponges and bryozoans6 m deep · 45 m from the boat
- 4Boulder pile with swim-throughs and overhangs8 m deep · 85 m from the boat
- 5Sparse Posidonia patches11 m deep · 130 m from the boat
- 6Open sand off the headland16 m deep · 185 m from the boat
Sandy bottom with sparse Posidonia patches, backed by stacked coralline limestone boulders against the headland.
Who you might meet
Almost always
Often
Marked ones can hurt you. What they do and what to do about it is under Getting in and staying safe.
Getting in and staying safe
Boat only, roughly half an hour on a charter from Malta and about twenty minutes from Ċirkewwa. Boats lie off the headland and divers giant-stride in, exiting by ladder. Snorkellers and cave-tour boats use the same water, so expect company. Nothing ashore: Comino's east coast has no landing, no facilities and no road access anywhere on the island. The nearest kiosks and seasonal toilets are at Santa Marija Bay.
- Overhead environment in the tunnel, roughly 30 m with no mid-route exit
- Surge and swell against this shore, uncomfortable inside the passage
- Tour boats, jet skis and snorkellers directly overhead
- Silt and fine sand kicked up in the tunnel
- Sharp rock and urchins on the boulders
- Low light without a torch, easy to miss the wall life and the exits
- Jellyfish in late summer
Marine life to respect
Mediterranean moray · Morina Can hurt you
Bites hard if a hand goes into its hole. Keep hands out of cracks and never feed one.
A bit of history
The arch is an erosional feature cut through upper coralline limestone, the same hard cap rock that produced Malta's other sea arches. The Azure Window at Dwejra in Gozo was the most famous of them until it collapsed during a storm in March 2017, a useful reminder that these spans are temporary on a geological clock. The nearby Santa Marija Caves on Comino's northern coast are part of the same jointed limestone system, with at least ten known chambers and swim-throughs, none deeper than about eight metres.
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Further reading: Calypso SAC, Santa Marija Tunnel and Elephant Rock · Divers Guide, Elephant Rock · DiveWise Malta, Santa Marija Caves · Malta Uncovered, Comino caves and Elephant Rock