Dive Report : Blue Hole and Azure Window, Gozo

Location:

About the site (from Wikipedia):

The Azure Window (Maltese: Tieqa Żerqa) is a natural arch in the Maltese island of Gozo featuring a table-like rock over the sea.

The arch of the Azure Window is disintegrating, as large pieces of rock keep falling from the arch. It is expected that the arch will completely disappear within just a few years. The arch is in a dangerous condition and warning notices are placed to stop people walking over the top of the arch. Evidence of this can be seen when the images of the Azure Window as shown in Clash of the Titans (1981) are compared to the more recent images shown in The Odyssey (1997) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). The former images depict the Azure Window arch with a flat underside, whereas the latter images clearly show that a significant proportion the flat underside has since broken away. In April 2012 a large piece of rock was dislocated and made the window larger, more unstable and losing its almost perfect oblong shape. Once the arch has completely crumbled away, the Azure Window shall be renamed Azure Pinnacle.

Dive Team:
 

Darrel (Guide & A), Bausiaux snr (A), Bausiaux jnr (A), Svenke Wall (B), Chris Armstrong (B) and Matey Lukats (DM & B)

Dive log:

I’m going to start this with a bit of a pre-dive dive log. We kitted up in the car park. From there you have to walk onto the rocky sea front. It starts of well, its just a bit uneven with a few pebbles, no biggy. Down the first set of stairs. I was relieved to feel that there wasn’t the slightest hint of bowing under my feet. And then down a second set.

Now, I want a small rant! Its amazing how “rude” the tourists are, there was one couple coming up the stairs, and being a big guy and in a twinset I was quite wide, so I didn’t want to try and squeeze past them and bump into them. So I left them come up first, I was just about to start making my way down when another couple of people came up! I’m sweating away in all this gear and they just take their sweet time! Grr! Anyway I get down the second set of stairs.

At this point the ground becomes more pebbly so with the weight of a twinset its uncomfortable to walk on but bearable. You basically walk down a valley towards the blue hole.Starts getting a bit more interesting now. You have to negotiate your way over a long section of boulders. There is a bit of a route carved through it. In a single cylinder, it wouldn’t be too bad, in twins, you just have to take it steady and make sure you get your footing right. Coming back was harder because you have to climb UP the rocks as opposed to down.

I can now see the pool of water starting to appear around the corner, the end is nigh!

This is actually the hardest and most dangerous part if I’m honest! The water is about 4 inches deep for quite a distance and the rocks are extremely uneven, the shallow water means its impossible to judge what you are stepping on, and it is very slippery again. If you just take your time you will be fine.

The pool has a kind of ledge, it slopes down to about knee-deep and then it kind of just drops off. So at this point I recommend (and did) turn around, inflate the wing and just fell in backwards. Svenke was cooking in his drysuit so he had gone down before me and was enjoying the coolness!

We didn’t have to wait long for our group to arrive and get set.

Firstly we dropped down into the Blue Hole to about 7m to get comfortable. At about 10m there is an arch that takes out towards the Azure Window and the open sea.

Swimming through this you are struck by the clear blue water, 30m visibility easily! There is a reef to our right as we swim out. After just a minute we are approach the Azure Window. The “boulders” that have fallen from the storms to make the arch above us are the size of large vans at the smallest! The splash they must have made when they fell would have been impressive! Rolling over and looking up you can see the arch above which looks stunning.

We are now swimming around the far edge of the column that makes up the Azure Window. The sea life is incredible, my HID light is useless at the moment, even with the ground just a metre or two below me I can barely make out the spot, looking forward I see flashes of silver as light glitters off the smooth scales of the schools of fish in front of me in a smooth liquid dance.

Looking to my right, I see the vast expanse of the ocean, looking right and down I am swimming over the ledge where there is a drop off. I can see more boulders easily below me, thinking back to the Faroud, as we approached that wreck, I remember looking down at the screws thinking, nah that’s only about 20m down, ha, it was at 35m. Bearing that in mind, looking over this ledge, its probably at a good 60m!

We are swimming along the wall of the headland now and there is a thin fissure that requires you to drop down to about 15m and leads up to a colourful, narrow chimney. The chimney is comfortably wide enough for a person, you could probably squeeze a second person in beside you so you don’t need to fear getting stuck. The chimney heads up at a 45 degree angle, levels out at about 9-10m and then heads up again to about 5m.

The corals were beautiful colours, fireworms that look like hairy centipedes were everywhere! The colours were incredible.

We swam around the Fingers Bay, there was a semi-dead jellyfish on the floor, if not dying it was stuck in a hole! It was upside down and getting close, I could see that it had tentacles about 2-4 inches long at most with a beautiful bright violet tips. When you think of jellyfish, you imagine the Austrailian ones with invisible tentacles stretching out 20 feet, but these are orangy and actually quite beautiful. We swam around the bay and then worked our way back and then swam down the chimney, looked even more impressive going down.

We spent a good while swimming through these underwater valleys admiring the fish and the colourful corals and plantlife. Matey found a cool plant? It was attached to the rocks, the body was a tube approximately 1cm in diameter and about 10cm long, at the end it had a beautiful array of branches fanned out trying to catch the nutrients in the water. Touching it, the branches quickly retract into the tube body. That was quite cool to see when Matey poked it.

Coming back, we passed under the arch once again and then came back to the Blue Hole. Now Svenke and I are advanced divers so our DM, Matey, showed us to a small cave.

The entrance to the cave is probably 3-4 double decker buses side by side big!!! Matey turned on his little handheld light, and I obviously had my HID on, once we got under the rock it was like a light sabra and travelled about 50m! The cave was huge, I had a good swim right to the back and had a good poke about, there were fossils all over the wall.

Matey found a large clam shell, easily the size of a papadum to give you an idea of size!

We are now at about 50 mins run time and time to head out. A group has just got in and started their descent so we let them pass first. I was a big kid and got above the divers descending and enjoyed the tickle of the bubbles! Shockingly it pushed me up from 7m to 3m! So I dropped back down to about 5m to start clearing off a safety stop. Looking around the wall I was trying to find sea horses but found none.

After looking around I decided I would just hover midwater so I settled at 5m and a jellyfish came down to keep me company! I really did find it quite interesting to look at. I was looking at the smooth top “head” and thought I’d give it a poke. I was expecting it to be extremely soft and flimsy, but it was actually quite tough! So this time I used my palm and started pushing it about!

There aren't any organs in a jellyfish, its just a mass of tissues, so I was pushing this about and flipping it upside down so I could see its tentacles and their beautiful purple tips. They move with the water flow, so wafting my hand I could watch them sway in the water.

I probably spent a good 5 minutes playing with this jellyfish, poor thing must have been dizzy if had “ears”! Yeah that’s also PADI rule #2 broken, touch nothing and leave only bubbles, ooooops!

Matey and Svenke and cleared their safety stop so up we went. Doing a 1m-minute ascent I deliberately stopped at 6m for 1 minute, 5m for 1 minute, 4m, 3m, 2m and 1m. And then an ultra slow ascent from 1 to the surface. I like my slow ascents, the pressure gradient on your body is changing at its fast pace so I like to control it and keep it down.

I mentioned earlier that the trek back is quite challenging. I stopped twice, I’d heard about a friend who had done a dive (a deep trimix dive) and had executed the deco successfully and had gotten bent. The difference between normal and this time was that he said he had done some significant exertion immediately after the dive : moving kit about, a twinset plus three deco bottles is a non-insignificant amount of weight.

Ever since I had heard about that I always took the work I did post dive very seriously and looking at this long (uphill) trek I wanted to take it carefully. Matey stuck with me and gave me a hand to help pull me up some of the bigger boulders. Thanks for your help buddy!

It was a welcome sight to see that Darrel had opened the back of the van and cleared a space for me to set the rig down, to say that I was relieved when I parked my hide would be an understatement!

I hope this has been interesting for you to read, it was interesting to “do” I promise!

Video:

Svenke has done a great job putting together some video of the dive and is on YouTube: