Club at scene of Azure collapse

Members of Slieve Foye Sub Aqua Club were on their annual diving holiday to Malta in the same week that the island’s famous Azure window at Gozo collapsed in a storm.

The club managed to get some diving done in Malta’s waters before a storm warning kept them on land. Four days after arriving, they were shocked to find out that the Azure window, beside the famous dive site of the Blue Hole, had collapsed.

The club’s diving officer Martin McKeown said: ‘ This would be one of the top ten dive sites in the world. It was also made famous back in the ‘Sixties by Jacques Cousteau the French diving explorer.

‘Apparently the tall stack of the Azure window collapsed beside the Blue Hole dive site at around 9am on the Wednesday morning. It was quite a surprise to see it missing as you can see from the photos of then, at our last dive trip in February 2016 and now.

‘ This Gozo site is also made famous as the location of Game of Thrones as an outside location for filming. Malta’s tourism board use this image heavily in its advertising campaign to promote the Maltese islands. It would be fair to say the Azure window is to Malta as the Eiffel Tower is to France’.

The group’s dive trip con- tinued the following day in another part of the island diving on two wrecks sitting at 38m deep - Karvela and Cominoland. There are beautiful photos and videos at Slieve Foye Sub Aqua Club on Facebook.

Martin said: ‘Hopefully this famous dive site will be open again soon to divers from all over the world to enjoy again’.