MV Cominoland

You reach Cominoland by finning down the reef slope on a south-easterly bearing until the hull lifts out of the blue, deeper than her top figure suggests, at around 35 metres across the superstructure. The set-piece is the stern, where the mine-laying winch still sits bolted in place, a direct line back to her wartime job. The two decks read cleanly and the cut openings make the interior easy to follow, though silt has gathered inside, so a torch and controlled buoyancy pay off. Fish life packs in tight around the bridge and railings. After the wreck you ascend north back onto the reef, drifting the boulders and Posidonia toward the safety stop and checking crevices for octopus and moray on the way up.

Cominoland is the wreck with a past. She began as a Royal Navy minelayer, and the winch still bolted at her stern gives her a story the other two lack. She is also the stripped-hull half of a deliberate experiment: her paint was removed before sinking while Karwela kept hers, so the pair let you compare two decades of marine growth on near-identical timelines a short fin apart. Smaller than Karwela, she reads as a single unhurried pass rather than a maze, which is part of why divers who want history over scale pick her.

She was built in 1942 as a small Royal Navy M-class minelayer, the sixth of her class, designated M6 and named Miner VI (pennant N16)1. After roughly two decades of naval service she was sold to Maltese owners in 1966 and converted to a passenger ferry on the Valletta-Comino run, passing through the names Minor Eagle and then Cominoland, and briefly Jylland II. From 1982 Captain Morgan Cruises ran her on tourist day-cruises around the Grand Harbour and out to Comino, sailing as Cominoland, until 2006. On 12 August 2006 she was scuttled at Xatt l-Ahmar beside Karwela, buoyancy tanks and lift bags settling her upright. There were no casualties. As the paint-off half of the growth experiment, her outer paintwork was stripped completely before she went down.

The wreck sits at 32 to 40 metres, below Malta's 30-metre certification threshold for independent diving, so unless you hold an appropriate deep certification a licensed instructor must accompany you. Nitrox is worth it for bottom time at that depth. Two decks with cut openings make the interior inviting, but silt lies inside, so stay off the structure and carry a primary torch. The stern winch and cut edges are sharp in places, and steady trim keeps you clear of them. Cominoland pairs naturally with Karwela a short fin west, and most divers plan their gas around the deepest point at the bows, close to 39 metres.