The Inland Sea tunnel at Dwejra in Gozo happens to be one of my top favourite dive sites in Gozo, so I am always happy to return to it for a peaceful hour beneath the waves. Moreover, venturing deeper in these waters one encounters a feature that I had not yet visited, namely a nice swim-through at around 50m. Therefore, Brian suggested that we plan a dive around this, to which I happily agreed.
The setup we used was the same as on our last few dives: 12L air-filled doubles for our bottom-time and 51% Nitrox for our decompression.
Once we were out, we kept descending and making our way to the swim-through.
After a few more metres, we arrived at the destination.
Upon making our way out from the swim-through, we proceeded to ascend to shallower levels to start our off-gassing.
On our way back we encountered a fair amount of marine life, including some fervent activity by painted combers (Serranus scriba) that were darting around an octopus. The reason for this was simple: painted comber tend to aggregate near an octopus nest as they wait for any left-over shellfish that an octopus might be feeding on. Indeed, upon our approach, the octopus swiftly retired to its well-hidden home deep inside the rocky wall.
Throughout our pleasant swim back through the tunnel, we slowly ascended to shallower levels until it was safe to switch to our deco gas at 21m. We finally arrived at the entrance to the tunnel where we finished our last decompression stop and then made our way back into the Inland Sea.
A screenshot of the dive profile is found below.
It was a very pleasant and calming dive, and I had the opportunity to further test the GRALmarine light which I tried for the first time the previous day. I can’t wait for the next dive already!
Site: Inland Sea Tunnel
Time in: 11:42
Time out: 12:49
Runtime: 67mins
Max Depth: 51m
Max TTS: 24mins
Bottom Temperature: 16ºC
Visibility: Good