Marine Adventure Park

I had long wanted to dive this park, which in fact are the Tuna nets that are scattered around this part of the island and house the tuna catch. They are in there for two reasons, firstly to grow larger and therefore be more valuable and secondly to wait for the value of tuna to increase, again making them more valuable to the owners.

Getting out to them is a twenty minute boat ride aboard a Luzzu. On arrival, the boat is tethered to the nets and then the fun begins. Getting inside the nets involves jumping into the water from the boat, making your way to the edge of the nets then, with assistance scrambling over the top, making an ungainly flop into the water.

Looking down, you are immediately struck by two things; firstly how big tuna are and secondly just how many there are. We had been told there were 3,000, well, there were a lot but more likely 300. Either way, there were loads of them swimming effortlessly in circles around the net, which itself is some 40m or so across.

We had been told that, on descent the tuna will swim round you so there is nothing to worry about in that respect, but as a result of the whirlpool that is created, you should be careful with your buoyancy. Erm, excuse me I am an instructor, my buoyancy is fine thank you very much. You can imagine my surprise when I found myself drifitng down and quickly discovered I was at almost 30m! I decided to swim into the middle of the circulating fish to get some photos looking up. It was really hard work and I kept finding myself going up or down. The swirling fish and lack of tangible reference points makes it difficult to establish depth and control buoyancy.

Yellow fin Tuna, so called because of the row of small yellow fins along the rear of their backs, are big! Some of the smaller ones are about a metre and a half long, but the bigger ones were in excess of two metres and must have weighed several hundred kilogrammes and boy could they move! With a flick of their tails they would swim around you and be gone before you could click the camera shutter.

I decided to move up and check on my clients. In this environment, guiding is not really feasible, it is more a case of being a safety diver. I had told them 45 minutes or when they had had enough. As I moved outwards and upwards I felt the effects of the whirlpool and felt myself rising, checking my depth gauge I was at 10m - oops! Locating the clients I followed them around as they took their last few photos and headed for the surface. Locating the boat is a case of ascending to the surface then looking. The nets are circular with no distinguishing features so it is pot luck whether you are close to the boat or not. As it happened we were reasonably close.

Exiting is the reverse of entry, flopping out of the nets into clear water and returning to the boat. Everyone enjoyed the dive but consensus has it that it is a one-off. For me, I may be back, depends on the clients!