Dwejra · Gozo
Whale Cave
A long slot in the Dwejra cliffs that takes you in at 25 metres and keeps a ribbon of daylight overhead the whole way, so you get the theatre of a cave with the sky never quite gone. Rarely crowded, which in Dwejra is saying something.
Sea conditions
Excellent right now
Flat, sheltered and calm
Forecast for the site, updated 01:33 AM
- Waves
- 0.3 m
- from SE
- Wind
- 8 km/h
- SSW, gusts 14
- Swell
- 0.2 m
- 5 s period
- Sea temp
- 28 °C
- air 27 °C
Next 7 days
Sunrise 06:47, sunset 19:06
Exposed to wind and swell from: W (270°), NW (315°), SW (225°). Dwejra is glassy in an easterly and unusable in anything with west in it. A simple local rule: if the boatmen have stopped running trips through the tunnel, the dive is off. Winter cancellations here are routine. Best season: May to November, with the clearest, calmest water usually in September and October..
The dive
Most divers get here the slow way: kit up on the shingle of the Inland Sea, drop into the little lagoon, and file out through the tunnel that the sea has bored through the headland. Once the tunnel spits you into open water the wall on your right is the road. Follow it north for a minute or two, watching the boulders go past, and a dark gap opens at around 25 metres.
Inside, the rock closes in on both sides but never over your head. The fissure is split from seabed to sky, so shafts of light drop in and the whole thing glows blue and silver depending on where the sun is. It runs a good eighty metres inland and steps upward as it goes, which makes for an unusually civilised profile: deepest at the door, shallowest at the far end, exactly the way you want a dive to unfold. Near the entrance on the right there is a slab you can slide underneath, and on the left a slot so tight it is really more of a dare than a passage; five metres in and you will want to reverse out.
What keeps the crowds away is the swim. This is a long way from the car for a site with no wreck and no statue, and the payoff is atmosphere rather than spectacle. Take a torch anyway, because the side pockets are properly dark and the sponges and bryozoans on the walls only give up their colour under light. Look up now and again too: the hulls crossing your ribbon of sky belong to the tourist boats doing the tunnel run.
- Eighty metres of fissure with daylight overhead the entire way
- Deepest at the door and shallowest at the back, a rare gift of a profile
- The swim-under slab and the dare of a slot beside it
- The Inland Sea tunnel as a warm-up act
- Almost always yours alone
Typical plan
From the Inland Sea, drop through the tunnel to a maximum of about 26 metres near its exit, then turn right and run north along the wall for a hundred metres to the crack at 25. Work inwards and let the fissure lift you to 10 metres or so by its far end, which buys back most of the deco you spent getting there. Come out, drift back south along the shallower part of the wall, and re-enter the tunnel for the exit with a stop on the way. Sixty to seventy minutes on a twin set or a big single with nitrox 32; on a single twelve, shorten the swim or take a boat drop.
What the bottom looks like
- 1Mouth of the Inland Sea tunnel12 m deep · 70 m out
- 2Deepest point inside the tunnel22 m deep · 110 m out
- 3Cliff wall running north30 m deep · 175 m out
- 4Entrance to the crack, about 15 m wide25 m deep · 250 m out
- 5Slab you can swim underneath, right-hand side24 m deep · 265 m out
- 6Narrow left-hand slot, passable for about 5 m22 m deep · 272 m out
- 7Shallow far end of the fissure8 m deep · 370 m out
Boulder rubble and bare limestone slabs at the foot of the wall, with pockets of coarse sand in the lee of the bigger rocks.
Who you might meet
Mediterranean damselfish
Almost always · Ċawla sewda
Saddled bream
Almost always · Kaħlija
Encrusting sponges
Almost always · Sponża
Cardinalfish
Often · Re di trilji
Common octopus
Often · Qarnit
Mediterranean moray
Sometimes · Morina
Dusky grouper
Sometimes · Ċerna
Nudibranchs
Sometimes · Spring
Scorpionfish
Sometimes · Ċippullazza
Slipper lobster
Lucky day · Ċikala
Getting in and staying safe
Drive to the Dwejra car park below the chapel, where the diving permit signs and the dive-centre vans gather. It is a short, level walk to the Inland Sea lagoon and then a careful step over rounded shingle to the water. Dwejra has a kiosk and toilets in season and very little in winter. From the lagoon it is roughly eighty metres of tunnel plus a hundred or so along the wall, which is a lot of swimming on a single twelve, so plan the gas or come by boat and get dropped straight on the crack. Boat charters run out of Mġarr and from the north coast when the wind allows.
- Swell funnels into the tunnel and the fissure and turns into surge that pushes you around at depth
- Tourist boats run the tunnel and the cliff base all day in season; stay off the surface or send a delayed SMB
- Long swim from the Inland Sea, so gas planning matters more than the depth suggests
- The narrow left-hand slot is a genuine squeeze and silts easily
- Downcurrent along the wall on windy days
- Sharp, slippery shingle and boulders at the lagoon entry
A bit of history
Dwejra is a geology lesson you can swim through. The soft, pale Globigerina limestone sits on harder Lower Coralline, and where the sea has picked at the join it has carved tunnels, collapsed domes and fissures like this one. The Inland Sea itself is a flooded sinkhole; the Azure Window, which stood a few hundred metres to the south, was the most famous product of the same process until it went into the sea during a storm on 2 March 2017. The Maltese name Għar in-Niexef translates roughly as the dry cave, which is a small joke on a site you can only reach underwater. The nickname Audrey's Crack is local dive-centre shorthand rather than anything official.
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Further reading: Malta Dives: Whale Cave, Dwejra · Watercolours Malta: diving the Inland Sea, Dwejra · Underwater Academy: Inland Sea, Dwejra · Visit Gozo: Dwejra