Malta

Ras ir-Raheb

Malta's western elbow, where a cave you can swim into from the surface drops to 25 m and the cliff outside falls away past 70 m into open blue. One of the island's great big-water dives.

Deep / Experienced🕳️ Cave🧱 Wall30 to 70 mBoat divePopularity: lowAlso called Ras il-Knejjes, Ras ir-Raħeb, The Hermit's Head

Plan this dive

Sea conditions

Excellent right now

Some chop (0.4 m ESE)

Forecast for the site, updated 01:47 AM

Waves: 0.4 m; from ESE
Wind: n/a
Swell: 0.4 m; 5 s period
Sea temp: 29 °C

Next 7 days

Today🌤️78 0.5 m
0 N

Sat🌤️86 0.4 m
0 N

Sun🌤️87 0.4 m
0 N

Mon🌤️98 0.2 m
0 N

Tue🌤️85 0.4 m
0 N

Wed🌤️72 0.6 m
0 N

Thu🌤️74 0.6 m
0 N

Exposed to wind and swell from: W (270°), NW (315°), SW (225°), N (0°). As a west-facing headland it takes anything from the open Mediterranean quarter head-on, and a point always accelerates whatever current is running. Guides consistently flag currents, surge and swell here. Go on a flat easterly day and be prepared for the skipper to call it off. Best season: Late May to October. Visibility is regularly 30 to 40 m and can touch 50 m in autumn.

The dive

Ras ir-Raheb is the blunt headland that separates Fomm ir-Rih from the coast running north towards Gnejna, and it gives you two dives in one. The first is the cave, which opens at the waterline and sinks to about 25 m inside, a proper cathedral of a thing that swallows the daylight in stages as you go down. The second is the wall outside, which starts on a narrow shelf around 20 m and then simply stops being a slope.

Below that shelf the rock goes vertical and keeps going to a sandy floor somewhere past 70 m. There is nothing to hold on to visually, no sand to reassure you, just deep blue in every direction and a face of limestone at your shoulder. Divers who come here for the first time often report a strange wobble of vertigo, and the honest answer is that it is the clarity playing tricks rather than anything going wrong.

The better plan for most people is to use the wall as scenery rather than as a target. Run it east towards Fomm ir-Rih, where the ground rises to a friendlier 20 m, and let the pelagic traffic come to you. This is one of the spots where amberjack and the odd tuna genuinely pass through, and the resident grouper here are a decent size.

A cave you enter from the surface and follow down to 25 m
A properly vertical wall into water deeper than 70 m
Big blue with a real chance of amberjack and passing pelagics
Resident grouper that are used to being looked at
Visibility that routinely hits 40 m

Typical plan

Drop onto the shelf beside the rock, do the cave first while you are fresh and your light is strong, working down to around 25 m inside and back out into daylight. Then take the wall east towards Fomm ir-Rih at a planned 30 to 35 m for ten to fifteen minutes, keeping the rock on one shoulder as your only reference. Come up in stages along the shelf and finish shallow. Nitrox 28 pays for itself here, and if you are going past 35 m treat it as a staged decompression dive with a slung deco cylinder. Total run time 40 to 50 minutes.

What the bottom looks like

1Cave mouth at the surface4 m deep · 5 m out
2Cave floor at about 25 m22 m deep · 16 m out
3Narrow shelf at 20 m20 m deep · 34 m out
4Lip where the wall goes vertical30 m deep · 42 m out
5Sheer face into the blue55 m deep · 55 m out
6Sandy floor beyond 70 m72 m deep · 80 m out

Cartoon cross-section along the usual route from the boat drop. Depths are approximate.

Hard limestone shelf and vertical wall above a clean sand floor that sits deeper than 70 m.

Who you might meet

Getting in and staying safe

Boat only, and it has to be a boat willing to sit close to a cliff in open water. Most operators run up from Cirkewwa or across from Gnejna when the forecast allows. The skipper puts you on the shallow shelf right against the rock so you can pick your depth on the way in rather than free-descending over nothing. There is no shore alternative: the clifftop is reachable on foot from Baħrija but the drop to the sea is not.

Strong currents that can set hard around the point
Deep water directly below you with no natural depth stop
Blue-water disorientation and vertigo on the vertical face
Cave section needs a light, a line plan and good buoyancy
Surge inside the cave mouth even on a fairly calm day
Boat cover is your only exit, so a DSMB is not optional

A bit of history

The headland is named for a Roman-period temple site on the clifftop, sometimes called Ras il-Knejjes, the point of the churches. Excavations there turned up the remains of a small sanctuary and sculptural fragments, and the Maltese name, the monk's head, probably comes from the ruined structure rather than any actual hermit. Geologically the point is Upper Coralline limestone sitting on softer Blue Clay, which is why the whole west coast here is a line of collapsing cliff and boulder scree.

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Further reading: Calypso Sub-Aqua Club site notes · Divers Guide: Ras ir-Raheb · Wikipedia: Ras ir-Raħeb · Malta Dive Sites index entry