A tiny cove on the north shoulder of Mellieha Bay with a rock arch, a lot of small life, fossil shark teeth in the shingle, and nothing deeper than about 12 metres.
ReefSea conditions
Marginal right now
Some chop (2.9 m NW) · Fresh WNW wind (54 km/h) · Gusts to 91 km/h
Done for today. Tomorrow: diveable all day. Lowest point 68 around 06:00.
Forecast for the site, updated 19:45 · Models disagree
Measured at Ċirkewwa (6.5 km away, 19:44): 58 km/h from WNW, gusts 60. The next hours lean on it.
- Waves
- 2.9 m
- from NW, biggest 3.5
- Wind
- 54 km/h
- WNW, gusts 91
- Swell
- 1.0 m
- 10 s period
- Sea temp
- 22 °C
- air 18 °C
Hour by hour
Next 7 days
45 3.0 m45 W
53 2.8 m44 WNW
100 0.8 m13 W
81 0.4 m13 ESE
74 0.5 m12 E
71 0.5 m18 NNW
77 0.4 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: NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°). Sheltered from north and northwest winds, which is the whole reason it exists on dive centre lists. It becomes unusable when the wind swings into the east or northeast and pushes swell up Mellieha Bay. Best season: Year round. Best from June to November for water temperature; in winter it is often the only comfortable entry in the north during a northwesterly..
The dive
Slugs Bay is the sort of place you would drive past without noticing, which is exactly its charm. A narrow slot in the rock on the north side of Mellieha Bay, a concrete jetty, a scrap of shingle, and a dive that never gets deeper than roughly twelve metres. It is the standard answer to the question every Maltese dive planner eventually asks: where can we still get in when the northwesterly is howling?
Underwater the bay is a neat sampler of Maltese shallows. Rock and boulders near the sides, ribbons of seagrass, clean sand in the middle, and a natural arch in the rock that is the site's one genuine landmark and everyone's photo. Because it is small you can cover the whole thing at a crawl, and crawling is the right speed: the density of small life here is well above what a twelve metre cove has any right to hold.
On the eastern side the bottom turns to fine shingle and sand, and this is where divers sift up fossilised shark teeth, leftovers of the Miocene seabed that makes up this coast. Look, photograph, put it back, since taking things out of the water is not on in Malta.
The name is a small joke that stuck. The sea cucumbers lolling on the bottom got called slugs by British servicemen, and the bay has worn the label ever since. Add an easy sandy bottom for skills and you have a site that works equally well for a first open-water dive, a night dive, or a macro session with a bad weather forecast.
- A photogenic natural rock arch in six metres of water
- Fossilised shark teeth in the shingle on the east side, look but leave them
- Sheltered when the northwest coast is unworkable
- Sandy bottom that makes skills practice easy on the reef
- Small, shallow and slow: an hour disappears without effort
Typical plan
Step off the jetty, drop to 3 or 4 metres and follow the left-hand rock out of the cove, taking in the arch on the way. Cross the middle to the sand at 10 to 12 metres, work east over the shingle with your eyes down, then come back along the opposite wall in the shallows. Sixty to seventy five minutes on a single cylinder is realistic given the depth; air is fine and a torch pays for itself in the boulder cracks.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Concrete jetty entry and exit0 m deep · 0 m out
- 2Boulder ground along the cove sides5 m deep · 30 m out
- 3Natural rock arch6 m deep · 60 m out
- 4Posidonia patches9 m deep · 95 m out
- 5Shingle and sand with fossil shark teeth, east side11 m deep · 125 m out
Rock and boulders around the edges giving way to seagrass, then fine shingle and sand in the middle and along the east side.
Who you might meet
Almost always
Sometimes
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
Shore or boat. From the road along the north side of Mellieha Bay, a rough track drops towards the cove; the last stretch is genuinely only sensible in a 4x4, and the walk in kit from the nearest sane parking is roughly 40 to 100 metres over uneven ground. Two ways in: off the small concrete jetty, or off the rocks beside it. The jetty gets treacherously slippery when wet. No toilets, no cafe and no shade at the site, so bring water; Mellieha Bay with all its facilities is a few minutes away.
- The concrete jetty is very slippery when wet
- Rough access track and uneven walk in full kit, 4x4 territory
- No facilities, no shade and limited phone signal at the cove
- Swell wrapping into the bay makes the jetty entry hazardous
- Small boats entering the cove in summer
- Sea urchins on the shallow rock
- Jellyfish drifting in during 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.
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
The bay's name comes from the sea cucumbers that litter the bottom, which British military personnel are said to have nicknamed slugs. Geologically it is a slot eroded into the limestone of the southern flank of Marfa Ridge, and the fossil shark teeth found in the shingle on the east side come out of the same Miocene rock that forms the ridge above. Malta's tourism authority produced a dive site report for the bay, numbered sixteen in the series, which is still the standard reference for local briefings.
Divers say
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Further reading: Divers Guide: Slugs Bay dive site · Malta Dive Sites: Slugs Bay · Malta Tourism Authority, Dive Site Report 16: Slugs Bay