JK'ing Around in Europe: Malta, Post 3

Welcome to Post 3! I realized that the last few posts have been heavy on the land-based adventures and not the underwater ones - this post solves that issue! However I'll start with a few more pictures of the beautiful Malta weather and blue skies. I couldn't get over how few clouds there were all week. I've really struggled with how cloudy and rainy the UK has been, and it was so wonderful to have blue skies to enjoy again!

On to the underwater cameras! Several people had GoPros, with high enough definition to take screen captures, and Christian brought a handheld point-and-shoot camera with a waterproof housing and a red filter that tones down the blue and brings back some of the other colours. He was nice enough to lend it around to different groups so everyone could take a turn and get some pictures.

It was funny how quickly we could identify divers in these photos, mostly from the mask, fins, and hair (or hood in my case). Justin has a blue mask and black fins, I have a yellow mask and was using yellow fins. Steph, our instructor, was always easy to spot in pictures as she had mismatched fins!

When compared to diving in the UK (as well as Ohio and Ontario, where I've previously dived), the visibility was excellent and the water was warm enough that it was pleasant (although I still got cold by the end of longer 40 or 50 minute dives). The marine life was awesome, although the colours weren't as bright and vivid as I remembering seeing in other places (diving in New Brunswick, or snorkeling in the Dominican Republic). I'm not sure if this is a trick of memory, or if it's normal for the region, or perhaps similar to the bleaching of corals that is happening worldwide. Regardless, there was a wide variety of sea life and I wish I had gotten a good picture of all the animals we saw!

Let's start with my favourite, the nudibranchs. These soft unshelled gastropods (think a snail without a shell) are really common in the waters around Malta and come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes, and colours. I saw two 'sea cows' (see the picture I took below) and a very beautiful but tiny nudibranch called Flabellina affinis, which was less than one cm long. They are very brightly coloured as they are usually toxic, they are hermaphrodites with male and female reproductive organs, and they breathe through a branchial plume (butt feather is what I called it in Malta) and use several senses (touch, smell, taste) through the little tentacles on their heads. Some even eat tinier animals with toxic spines, digest these spines then have them migrate through their bodies to form 'armour' sticking out of their backs! What cool little animals!

I took this picture of one of the sea cows we saw. They are about 5-10cm long. See his butt feather?

Someone else in our group took this photo - I think it's a different type of nudibranch

This tiny guy was my favourite, but I didn't have a camera when we saw one so I am using this amazing picture (Photo credit: http://www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/2011/08/31/invertebrates-of-malta/). Flabellina affinis: grows up to 50mm long (I think the one we saw was more like 1 cm long), bright pink/purple, and carnivorous.

An even closer view.
Photo credit: http://www.wild-wonders.com/blog/?p=1252

There were also plenty of fish in the sea, so to speak, including barracudas (I enjoyed seeing them hunt schools of fish - just like watching a predator stalk a herd of antelopes on the savannah), although we weren't lucky enough to get those on camera.

The animals that we all worried about the most were the jellyfish. They were seemingly everywhere (explanations for exploding populations seem to range from warming ocean temperatures to overfishing) and the most common kinds give you a nasty sting. Our dive leader got stung on the hand early on, and many people took to holding their hands up out of the water once they entered and were floating on the surface. With gloves and a hood on (most people had neither) I was fairly well protected, so I wasn't as worried. I caused some stress for two of my dive buddies by swimming too close to a jellyfish rather than taking a wide berth!

The Mauve Stinger is the most common jellyfish in Malta

This was awesome! The Venus Girdle, or Cestum veneris, is a long comb jelly.

My favourite jellyfish appeared to be another type of comb jelly, approximately oval or football-shaped, with lines of rainbow light that ran backwards along its body, creating a disco ball effect. We were surfacing at the time so I couldn't take a picture, but this awesome webpage gives you the idea:

Rainbow jellyfish videos

In between dives, we would try to warm up in the sun and take in some of the local scenery. In the first panorama, Justin and I hiked up the hill to see an old church overlooking Camino Island. We heard that the church was facing towards the tiny island so that, if anyone was stranded there due to poor weather, they could look towards the church and celebrate Mass. (Apparently Malta is fairly religious - 360 churches in 122 square miles!)

Another time, we walked along a rock beach to this picturesque cave looking out into the sea.

Another amazing dive site was Cathedral Cave - you enter underwater, and can rise up and surface (even breathing the air, thanks to a few holes in the rocks) which seeing others silhouetted against the amazing blue light coming in from below. I wish we had stayed more than a few minutes here!

We only did a few wreck dives in Malta. One wreck, the Karwela, was too deep for the ocean divers to reach (although the lucky sports divers were able to go inside and swim down the staircase!). We were only able to swim above the mast. However, the P31 was nice and shallow so we all got the experience of exploring it together! The P31 was a German minesweeper built by East Germany during the Cold War, and after that it was sold to Malta and used to patrol against smugglers, until it was cleaned and sunk on purpose to form an artificial reef and diving attraction.