A little visited cave and wall dive on Malta's exposed west coast, with colourful rock faces, a pair of caverns worth a torch, and depths that run past forty metres if you follow the wall down.
Cave
WallDivers rarely, if ever, come here.
We found no record of anyone diving this site. It is charted so the picture of what lies under the water is complete, not because it is a place to go: there is no set route, no local briefing to lean on, and nothing on this page has been proven in the water.
Sea conditions
Stay dry right now
Sea is up (4.4 m WNW) · Fresh W wind (32 km/h) · Gusts to 49 km/h
Done for today. Tomorrow: not looking good. Best it gets is 22 at 17:00: Sea is up (1.7 m WNW)
Forecast for the site, updated 19:45 · Models disagree
Measured at Qammieħ (8.3 km away, 20:29): 24 km/h from W, gusts 40. The next hours lean on it.
- Waves
- 4.4 m
- from WNW, biggest 7.3
- Wind
- 32 km/h
- W, gusts 49
- Swell
- 0.4 m
- 11 s period
- Sea temp
- 22 °C
- air 18 °C
Hour by hour
Next 7 days
0 4.5 m51 W
0 4.3 m49 WNW
40 1.1 m16 WNW
92 0.3 m13 ESE
91 0.3 m11 E
86 0.3 m18 NNW
88 0.3 m16 SSW
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: SW (225°), W (270°), NW (315°), N (0°). This is the side of Malta that the northwesterly majjistral hits first, and it is unusable in anything from the western half of the compass. It needs a settled easterly or a flat calm, which in practice means a handful of days each season. Visibility, when you do get out there, is usually excellent because nothing stirs up the bottom. Best season: June to September, on easterly or windless days.
The dive
The west coast of Malta is where the island turns its back on the resorts. High cliffs, no road access worth the name, and a coastline that faces straight into the prevailing weather. Il-Qaws sits along that stretch and, because it can only be reached by boat on a calm day, almost nobody dives it.
The layout is classic Maltese wall: rock dropping away in stepped faces, ledges and overhangs coated in sponges and cup corals, and the colour that comes from a face that never sees much direct sun. Average working depth is around twenty metres, but the wall keeps going well past forty for anyone qualified and inclined. The draw for most visitors is the pair of caverns, big enough to swim comfortably and bright enough near the entrances to be genuinely photogenic.
The honest caveat is that published information on this site is thin. A handful of reports, a Malta Sub-Aqua Club page and a short listing, and that is about it. Treat depths and cave dimensions as indicative and get a briefing from whoever is running the boat, because they will know it far better than any website.
- Two swimmable caverns on a coast almost nobody dives
- Richly coloured wall faces with cup coral and sponge cover
- Wall that keeps going past forty metres for deeper teams
- The satisfaction of a site that only opens a few days a year
Typical plan
Drop in off the boat close to the cliff, work the shallower cavern first while everyone is fresh, then follow the wall down to a maximum of around thirty metres, visit the second cavern, and spend the back half of the dive drifting the wall back up through the ledges. Nitrox 32 in a single with a good torch each. Deeper teams can run the wall to forty plus on twin sets with a staged ascent.
What the bottom looks like
- 1First cavern near the surface7 m deep · under the boat
- 2Second, deeper cavern18 m deep · 20 m from the boat
- 3Colourful stepped wall face21 m deep · 35 m from the boat
- 4Wall steepens below thirty metres29 m deep · 60 m from the boat
- 5Fallen blocks at the base of the wall38 m deep · 90 m from the boat
- 6Sand at the foot of the drop42 m deep · 110 m from the boat
Bare limestone wall and ledges giving way to fallen boulders and a narrow sand strip at the base.
Who you might meet
Lucky day
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
Only for serious professionals who know exactly what they are doing. With no record of anyone diving here there is no one to ask and no set route, so treat every line below as the start of your own planning, not a briefing. Plan it as an expedition, not a dive.
Boat only, and the ride is a commitment from any of the usual harbours because there is nothing on the west coast to launch from. There is no mooring, no shore exit and no shelter, so the skipper stays live on the surface. Bring everything you need for the whole trip.
- Fully exposed coast with no shelter and no shore exit
- Swell and surge inside the caverns even on a reasonable day
- Wall profile makes it easy to drift deeper than planned
- Overhead sections need a torch and a sensible turn point
- Long boat ride from the nearest harbour
- Limited published information, so brief carefully
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.
Red scorpionfish · Ċippullazza Can hurt you
Venomous spines, and it sits still on the rock. Look before you kneel or hold on; hot water if stung.
A bit of history
No wreck or war story recorded here. The interest is geological: these are the western cliffs of Malta, where Upper Coralline limestone caps softer blue clay and Globigerina beds, and the slippage and collapse of that sequence is what carves out the caves, overhangs and stepped walls that make the diving worth the boat ride.
Divers say
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Further reading: Malta Dive Sites: Il-Qaws · Malta Sub-Aqua Club: Qaws dive site