Amorgos

Diving here runs from two harbours. Amorgos Diving Center has worked the Aegiali bay beachfront since 2007 and takes the northern cluster around Nikouria islet and Grabonissi; WE SHALL SEA, based at Katapola, is credited with the southern sites around Kalotaritissa. Boats are day boats, not liveaboards: the Aegiali centre runs trips at 08:00 and 14:00 and sells night dives. Several of the named sites are shore dives, so a day can mix a boat wall in the morning with a walk-in cavern in the afternoon.

The terrain is shelf and wall. Agi Anna is flat to 18 m before the wall falls to about 40 m, and Nikouria slopes to the same depth; Nikouria Northern Wall holds a cavern at around 25 m, Small Sparti Caves opens a passage through fallen rock at about 18 m, and the Cathedral has a chimney that drops sunbeams into it. A huge Neptune grass meadow near the Nikouria cavern carries fan mussels, nudibranchs and pipefish, and damselfish, groupers and wrasses hold on the rocky reefs. Blue Dive is different in kind, a drop into open water from a fishing boat.

It suits divers who want variety on a quiet island and are content to reach it by ferry: shore entries and a training bay at one end, 40 m walls and a blue-water drop at the other, with amphorae and mine workings in between. It is not a big-animal destination; the logged sightings are octopus, parrotfish, moray and barracuda rather than anything pelagic. Wreck diving is thin as well. Little Wreck is a debris field trailing past recreational depth rather than a hull to swim, and the one dedicated wreck trip on the Aegiali price list, to a wreck listed as Manina 3, runs only when the weather allows. Divers who want an intact marquee hull are better served by the Zenobia at Larnaca.