Lantern Point

Most dives start on the shallow plateau at six to eight metres, which doubles as the boat's mooring point. From there the defining feature is the L-shaped chimney: a vertical swim-through that narrows as it drops, opening out again at sixteen to eighteen metres into a larger cave system or onto the main reef.1 The terrain is compact rather than sprawling, rewarding a slow look into holes and fissures over long fin kicks across open ground. Below the chimney, the character changes: enormous limestone boulders have collapsed along the base of the cliff, forming swim-throughs and cavern spaces between twenty and thirty-five metres, light shafts cutting between the gaps, and grouper, moray eels and scorpionfish sheltering inside year-round. Past the boulder zone, the open wall runs from about twenty-five metres down past fifty, sponges and gorgonian fans crowding the rock face top to bottom. Below thirty metres the wall turns darker and starker, large barrel sponges and black coral standing out against the deeper blue, and this is where the biggest pelagic encounters happen: amberjack cruising the wall face, barracuda schooling in mid-water off the point. Divers who prefer a more sheltered profile, or who hit current on the main point, shift to the Inner Lantern Point sub-site, a calmer mix of reef and cave entrances at twenty to forty metres.

Lantern Point is one of relatively few sites in the whole Maltese archipelago where the wall keeps going well past recreational sport-diving depths, while still opening with a shallow, approachable plateau and chimney an Advanced diver can work through before choosing how deep to go. Its exposed position is a liability for access, boats only run here on calm days, but it's also why the site stays in better shape than sheltered, heavily visited spots: low traffic and open-water circulation support an unusually rich boulder-cavern fish and invertebrate assemblage. Gorgonian fans on the eighteen-to-thirty-metre band grow past a metre and a half across in places, a size credited to that low dive pressure. The wall has carried its reputation for decades. Maltese technical divers documented it in the late 1980s as one of the few places in the islands where a wall runs past sport-diving limits, and because it sits on Comino's remote south-west tip, it was always a boat dive from Malta or Gozo, never a shore dive.

Carry a primary torch for the boulder caverns and chimney zone, plus a backup for the deeper cavern sections. An SMB is mandatory on every dive, minimum two metres, given the open-water exposure and boat traffic transiting between Malta, Gozo and Comino. Agree a maximum depth in the pre-dive briefing: narcosis becomes a realistic consideration below thirty metres. Confirm current direction and strength on the surface before descent, since the guide will redirect to the sheltered Inner Lantern Point sub-site if it's running strong on the main point. Plan the ascent to leave the wall with at least 100 bar in reserve, surfacing on no less than 50. Nitrox at 32% or 28% is worth carrying for the extended bottom time the depth demands.