On Saturday 16th August at 08:00 hrs, I was accompanied by Tony and Paul onboard the “Sea Lion 1” a traditional Maltese diving ‘Luzzu’. We were cruising at 12 knots heading southeast to a destination of eight miles off the coast of Malta. The reason for this trip was that we were going to attempt to do a search and retrieval dive. The dive area was a reef of 40 to 52 meters deep, but what interested us most was only a particular point of that reef, a point that was a little bit difficult to find as this concerned only an area of around 80 square meters. Previously we had entered all the co-ordinates into the boat’s Global Positioning System, GPS, which is an instrument that gives the boats exact position via multiple satellites. It was a long awaited dive that we had been planning for these past 5 weeks.
 
“Half a mile ahead.”

Announced Paul who had been checking the GPS every second. The captain of the boat was told to proceed with the minimum speed possible and with all eyes focused on the GPS and the depth sounder we started to approach our destination. To find what we were looking for, it was very important to use a depth sounder also, as this scans the sea bottom and gives the information on a screen in front of us. Another glance at the GPS showed that we had approached to 10 meters to the point, but the sounder still was showing no irregularities. On the chart it showed that the reef continues to a certain point where there is a drop-off to a depth of 60 meters but still the sounder showed nothing except some small boulders on the reef itself. By this time we had passed the position we had entered on the GPS and here the bottom began to deepen again 43, 44, 47, 50 then 60 meters, we had found the drop-off but not what we were looking for.

Here it was decided that we do paths at right angles across the drop-off so our search could be more effective. We were scanning paths of 10 meters apart, which gave us a good view on what’s at the bottom. After about three attempts that we started this method and about 10 meters away from the original point, a sharp decrease in the depth of the bottom made us all shout together.

“Hey! What’s that look?”

There on the screen in front of us was what we thought was the reason we came out that day.

 “Quick, take the position.” I told Paul. 

 He immediately entered the new position on the GPS and we told the helmsman to start maneuvering the boat around this point.

The images that we were seeing all corresponded to the information we had gathered, the depth, length and the width. This mass we found, which was where our next dive was going to be, was lying on the see bottom at a depth of 50 meters 5 meters more than what we had planned on the information we had. The shallowest point of this object was 39 meters, but what concerned us most was the position it was lying at. It seemed that it was resting on the ledge of the drop-off, apart for the extra 5 meters of depth, which would alter our diving plan.