MV Karwela

The ferry's upright hull resolves out of the blue at around 30 metres, top deck first, once you have finned south down the shore reef from the Xatt l-Ahmar entry. Most divers work the open deck lines, then drop through a cut opening into the interior. The staircase is the centrepiece: it falls away toward the lower deck with daylight angling through the portholes, and it is the frame everyone comes down for. Deeper in, the engine room and lower passenger spaces hold a workbench and old fittings under a thin layer of silt, so a torch and steady buoyancy earn their place. The stern sits deepest at 41 metres, with the bow a little shallower at 39, which makes gas and no-decompression time the real limits. The way back is an unhurried climb up the reef slope to a safety stop near the exit ladders.

Karwela is the friendly one of the Xatt l-Ahmar wrecks — Cominoland, Xlendi, and, since the tanker Hephaestus was scuttled nearby in 2022, four of them rather than the original three. She sits intact and navigable where the nearby Xlendi lies crushed and upside down, and she holds more interior to explore than the smaller Cominoland beside her. Divers nicknamed her a tiny Titanic for the wooden staircases and long rows of passenger windows. The openings cut before she went down make her the easiest through-swim of the group, with predictable light and a compact layout that rewards a slow pass. She also kept her paint at scuttling, the deliberate other half of a marine-growth experiment run against the stripped hull of Cominoland next door.

She began life in 1957 as the German ferry Frisia II12, built by Jos L. Meyer at Papenburg for the run between Norddeich and the Wadden island of Norderney. Sold and renamed Nordpaloma in 1977, she moved to the Baltic coast and was put out of service by a collision in the mid-1980s. In 1986 she came to Malta, was repaired, and took the name Karwela, working as a Maltese tourist ferry until she was retired in the early 2000s. On 12 August 2006 she was scuttled off Xatt l-Ahmar alongside Cominoland, with buoyancy tanks used during the sinking to set her down upright rather than let her roll like the Xlendi. There were no casualties. This was a planned artificial-reef project, her tanks cleaned of oil and fuel beforehand.

The decks sit at 30 to 41 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 helps stretch bottom time at that depth. Inside, the cut openings are generous but silt lies on the lower deck, so stay off the structure and carry a primary torch for the interior. The metal edges and railings are sharp in places, and good trim keeps you clear of them. Most divers pair Karwela with Cominoland a short fin east and plan their gas around the deepest point, the stern at 41 metres.