Location:
About the site:
The Inland Sea at Dwejra Point is a sheltered lagoon,
offering easy access from a small jetty. Boats taking tours use this route to
the open sea so take care. Using SMBs isn’t advice as boat drivers don’t
understand want they represent and use them as targets!
Dive team:
Darrel (Guide & A), Babusiaux snr (A), Babusiaux jnr (A), Svenke Wall (B),
Chris Armstrong (B) and Matey Lukats (DM & B)
Dive log:
The left hand side of the pool is where divers should stay
to stay safe from boats. A small buoy marks an ideal point to descend to about
3m. Swimming towards the fissure, keeping the wall on your left you quickly
enter a darkened zone.
I strongly recommend keeping your light off while you swim out. Once your eyes acclimatise the view is beautiful. Svenke and I were bad and I had turned my HID on out of habit as we dropped from the surface - my mentality is that I always want my light on so that I can quickly signal my team if needed.
Mate had found a fish that had died and was in the process of being digested by literally 20 fireworms!
The bottom is very rocky and gently works its way down to about 15-20m by the time you reach the far opening. From there it keeps on going to 30m. Given how clear the water was, we chose to stay shallow(er) at about 22m.
Like the Blue Hole / Azure Window dive done earlier in the
day, there was a very clear shelf with a view down to 60m that was astounding.
This dive was really a wall
dive, but what made this really interesting was that the wall wasn’t smooth, or
jagged like you would get out of say a quarry type wall. So there were nooks and crannies to be looking in to find sea horses, octopuses and a whole host of other sea creatures. Being at about 22m we slowly worked out way up to meet Darrell and the Norweigan cohort at about 12m before we turned back.
Darrell was sticking close with the junior diver and there was a point where we ripped off the weight belt because it was causing the young diver problems. From then on he did much better. Although there was a very funny few moments ... I believe it was the wetsuit "string" on the zipper, Darrel was holding on that as a make-shift jon-line. At this point the young lad started descending and Darrell was using it to pull him back up!
From where Svenke and I were at the back, it looked like an underwater "walking the dog!"
Coming back through the fissure. I was out front with Matey and we were lighting up the walls for Svenke. To the left was a swim through through a section of boulders which was very interesting!
Coming out of that, I found Darrell with the young lad doing an improtu peak performance buoyancy test. This doesn't sound like anything worth noting, but the bit that made me chucke was that the young lad was floating mid water on his back and Darrell was just nudging him about. His buoyancy at that point was perfect! I was soo tempted to flip him about as I swam by but thought I should try and be mature!
The inland sea is a beautiful dive, you get rewarded twice with the beauty of the sights you get swimming through the fissure, it certainly must be done at least once on a dive trip.
Video:
Svenke has done some great work pulling together some video of the dive:
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