Cirkewwa, P29 etc
Posted on April 21, 2024 • 3 minutes • 639 words
Table of contents
About the Cirkewwa Marine Park
The Cirkewwa Marine Park is a diving area on the northwestern tip of Malta, near the ferry terminal to Gozo. It is a marine protected area that aims to improve tourism in the region.
The Malta Tourism Authority manages the Cirkewwa Marine Park, which includes four dive sites, with two wrecks and a reef.
The two wrecks in the marine park are for advanced divers: they go deeper than 30 metres and most wrecks are naturally challenging.
If you have the advanced certification, but not the deep dive specialty, like I did, you’ll stay at or above 30 meters when exploring the wrecks.
The reefs are shallower, so open-water divers could technically dive there, even though the wrecks are the main attractions here. But for open-water divers the are plenty to see, there is a reef (left and right) on both sides to dive along. This is a very famous dive site for all the Dive Schools in Malta.
Dive sites in the Cirkewwa Marine Park
The Cirkewwa Marine Park has a lot of diving sites: Tugboat Rozi, P29 Patrol Boat, Cirkewwa Arch and Sugar Loaf and Madonna and on the deep level there is the Anchor.
We have dived here a couple of times, seeing Tugboat Rozi, P29 and the arch.
My dives this time, first P29 Patrol Boat
The P29 wreck was the main draw of our next dive in the clear waters of Cirkewwa Marine Park.
To get to P29 we swam further out (it took about 10 minutes to swim to the wreck, staying between 5 – 10 metres). Then we began to descend, and we saw the shape of the former patrol boat, P29.
We came in from the back on the stern, where there were more divers than usual. Anyway, when we entered the back and were circling over the deck, we saw this big, amazing fish called John Dory. It looked like a ghost fish or a fish from ancient times.
P29 was originally built in East Germany and sold to Malta in 1997 and operated until 2004. But in 2007, the Malta Tourism Authority sank her to create what is now a diver’s paradise.
The outside of the boat is covered in reef and marine life, and there’s even a machine gun on deck.
For experienced divers, there are opportunities to enter the wreck and explore its inside and workings; but, as I didn’t have my deep or wreck dive specialty, we stayed around 30 metres while exploring the wreck.
Cirkewwa Arch and the Anchor
The Cirkewwa Arch was formed when the top of an underwater cave – Which there are many of along the way – collapsed.
It’s an underwater rock formation that’s covered in plant life and can be swum to and around – which makes for some great photos!
After a walk-in from Susie’s Pool, we had dived to around five metres, before starting the gradual descent along the reef wall.
On the way, we spotted plenty of fish – the most colorful that I’d ever seen outside of tropical waters. There was some small oranges fish and the lovely Parrot fish.
On this dive along the Right Reef we saw a wonderful lobster, very big one and beautiful colors. Grey shifting into blue. It had a pattern like an “eye” on its back.
We also did the dive to the Anchor which is about 30 meters. We did the same route as diving through Susie’s Pool to the edge of the reef wall, where we descended slowly to 25 meters.
At the Anchor was at 29-30 meters, we hovered for a while because there was a beautiful octopus hidden there. I think it was a female and she was kind of looking at us skeptically while we were trying to film her.