On Sunday morning I dove the Xlendi wreck, which I visited three weeks ago. This time round I carried along the new, bright GRALmarine light with the intention to take a few lit-up pictures of the interior’s outskirts. As a reminder, the Xlendi wreck lies upside down on the sandy bottom (as the featured image of this post clearly shows) and it is dangerous to penetrate. So please be cautious and avoid all temptation to do anything stupid.
Before we even approached the wreck itself we encountered a streaked gurnard, so we paused and hovered above it momentarily, until it whizzed off at super speed.
Following this, we turned around the Xlendi, and I snapped the below picture which shows how she has almost ‘merged’ with the seabed itself.
As we turned around, I found myself reminiscing about how I used to board this boat which served as a ferry between Malta and Gozo when I was a child.
Continuing along, we came across a couple other tech divers doing the circuit in the opposite direction.
Eventually we had a very short peek at the outskirts of the Xlendi’s interior. Once again, I ask that you do NOT venture inside this wreck, not even its outskirts, unless you are an experienced diver and diving accompanied by someone well experienced with this wreck.
After this short excursion, we proceeded outwards from the other side.
Upon exiting we came upon a nice Scorpion fish which was unusually fine with a two noisy bubblers approaching it.
Before we knew it, our planned 30min bottom time was up, and we proceeded our slow ascent to the surface, stopping at each decompression stop until we came to our six-metre stop.
Here, we saw a seahorse well hidden amongst the surrounding fronds. I had to snap a picture, of course, but this one’s not going to take any awards! There was a frond right in front of it and I was very reluctant to move it as it was very close to the seahorse and I was afraid that by doing so I would disturb it. (Seahorses are very sensitive little creatures.)
And that was it! 70 minutes went by like a breeze and I’m already missing the weightlessness of the blue world. Below you may find the dive profile logged by the Shearwater Petrel 2.
And, as always, here goes a summary of the log. Until the next one, folks!
Site: Xlendi Wreck
Time in: 09:37
Time out: 10:46
Runtime: 69mins
Max Depth: 43m
Max TTS: 24mins
Bottom Temperature: 16ºC
Visibility: Very good