53 minutes on Cirkewwa Reef, Malta

One dive was all I got, but it was a fatty.

I interrupt a conference between Painted Combers and juvenile moray eel.

The two combers nosed around the depression in the reef wall like debt collectors at a doorstep. The baby moray wasn't coming out, and when I arrived wielding a camera in macro mode, the eel retreated.

Wrasse crossing

A Turkish wrasse checked me out to see if I was going to dig up some food. Around the corner, over the drop-off, a different wrasse led a string of babies along the reef wall. Jason beckoned to me and wrote "Off to school" on his slate, by which time the fish had gone.


Blenny Hill

First a yellow, then a red one. Tiny things with black heads and bright bodies. Each rested long enough for me to approach but not for the camera to capture them. Damn you, garish fish, although I admire your colouring. Turns out the world knows them as triple-fin blennies.

Cnidarian Mass Suicide

At five metres depth: Inverted or horizontal jellyfish pushed themselves into the rocks; at hollows; against sponges. They pulsed like purple mushrooms. Some were already dead. This stretch of reef was their terminus.

Holy Mary, Covered In Clam

Jason gestured and I obeyed, diving down to about 16 metres and expecting to see an octopus, or a Dentex ready to burst into the open sea, or a grouper sulking. Instead the reef resolved into a statue of the madonna posing in a natural alcove. Plastic flowers and a clamshell necklace set off her piety.

Sea fan

Jason led us away from the wall towards the wreck of the Rozi. A saddled bream pushed in, following a harpoon-length behind Jason. It was like a stray cat. Later Jason explained that dive groups go out to the wrecks with bread crumbs and scraps; the fish get used to it and learn to expect treats when they see divers. As a great doyenne of diving once said re: hand-feeding fishes, "it messes with their indigestion systems."

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