Anchor Bay

The entry is a concrete jetty on the bay's south side, opposite the wooden houses of Popeye Village, with ladders down to the water and a dirt road behind you for the walk in. Follow the jetty wall down and the anchor appears first: a large iron anchor and its chain, resting on sand at about 8 metres, a fixed point every dive here works around. From there the terrain opens into boulders and low reef, threaded with small swim-throughs, small groupers and octopus tucked among the rocks, on the way to Scorpion Cave. The cave's mouth opens around 10 metres and shallows back toward 8, wide enough that the entrance stays in view the whole way in, with an air pocket at the back where some divers briefly surface without removing a regulator. Divers who push past the sheltered inner bay find exposed boulder and reef terrain where current builds and bigger fish become more likely, before turning back for the jetty. A handful of accounts push that outer profile to 18 metres or more for confident divers happy to leave the bay's shelter, though most visits stay comfortably inside the shallow inner circuit. Posidonia seagrass fills the sandy patches between the boulders. It gives the swim a second habitat beyond the bare rock.

Anchor Bay isn't chasing a signature dive. Its case is shelter, not spectacle: a named anchor, a guided cavern, and a bay that stays calm on days when wind shuts down the rest of Malta's northwest coast. That practical value is why several Mellieha-area dive schools use it for try-dives and skills sessions rather than as a first-choice destination. The Popeye Village film set on the north shore, built in 1980 and still standing, frames every dive from above the water rather than under it, a curiosity that gives the site its name. The anchor's own story stays open. Some call it nineteenth century; another account ties it instead to the Scotscraig, the production barge that sank nearby in 1981. What isn't in question is Scorpion Cave itself: a wide-mouthed cavern, not a technical cave, with smaller side pockets branching off the main chamber.

A torch matters here, not as an optional extra. Scorpion Cave's interior needs it, and the schools who dive this bay regularly say so plainly. Do not remove your regulator inside the cave's rear air chamber. The trapped air can be stale, even though it looks breathable. Entry and exit run through the jetty ladders rather than a beach, and surface conditions there can change with the weather, so check them before committing. Boat traffic passes near the bay mouth, most often on the surface swim back in, so an SMB deployed on ascent is good practice. Wind is the real variable at Anchor Bay. It stays diveable when a northeasterly closes other northwest sites, which is exactly why several schools default to it on those days.