Corsica — Ajaccio & Sagone

This is two small hubs on one coast rather than one dive town. Maeva Plongée at Porticcio, on the south shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio, runs its exploration dives across the whole gulf between the Sanguinaires islands and Capo di Muro, and the beach opposite the centre serves for discovery dives and training to about 10 m. Sagone Plongée works from the main beach at Sagone, about 35 km north-west by road, with its own boat, training and night dives. Sites are reached by boat from each centre, and a diver based in Ajaccio should expect a drive to Sagone for the second set of sites. Both centres run discovery dives and the French federation and PADI ladder.

The terrain is granite: rock heads rising from 40 m to the surface at La Tête de Mort, three emergent rocks at Les Trois Frères stepping down through plateaus at 6, 12 and 20 m, and arches, caves and drop-offs at E Sette Nave and La Campanina. Pointe Loca in the Golfe de Sagone is a run of tunnels and vaults to 40 m. The one wreck is an aircraft: a fighter fuselage on sand at 19 m off the gulf's south shore, wings silted in, which the Porticcio centre identifies as a 31st Fighter Group P-51 Mustang lost on 5 July 1944. Site logs name groupers, moray eels, lobsters, dentex, seabream and nudibranchs on the Ajaccio rocks, groupers and barracuda at Loca, and posidonia meadows at Banc Provençal.

The area suits a diver who is already in Ajaccio and wants rock diving without a fixed itinerary, or a family with beginners in the group: both centres run discovery dives and the plateaus at 6 to 20 m are within Open Water reach. It suits less well anyone after one concentrated destination. Calvi, with the B-17 wreck and the Revellata secs, sits under a single harbour, Lavezzi off Bonifacio offers habituated grouper at Mérouville, and the Golfe de Valinco around Propriano has its own centres and a denser set of secs; all three are better for a week built around diving. The Scandola reserve north of Sagone is not part of this area: scuba diving is banned throughout its marine zone.