Corsica — Calvi & the Revellata

Diving is run from the Port de Plaisance in Calvi itself, where three centres work out of the harbour below the citadel. Most of the site list is a boat ride away: the B-17 lies at the foot of the citadel walls, Le Clocher sits out in the middle of the bay, and the rock and drop-off diving runs west along the Revellata peninsula towards the lighthouse and the Stareso research station. Calvi beach is the exception and the fallback — shallow, protected, and shore-entered, with room to run every training exercise from the sand.

The underwater ground is granite and rock rather than reef: aligned pitons and slabs descending from the surface to 20–30 m at Sec des Belges, canyons and corridors around Cap de la Revellata, and a maze of oversized scree at La Bibliothèque that forms caves, passages and air pockets. Gorgonians and red coral cover the deeper rock, with grouper, moray and conger in the cracks, barracuda and dentex out in the blue, and flabellina nudibranchs on the walls at 40–50 m. Posidonia meadows fill the sand between the rocks.

This is a coast for divers who like rock topography and one good wreck, and who are comfortable with a deep, current-exposed dive when conditions allow — Sec du Lion and Le Clocher are experienced-diver sites, and Le Clocher in particular is a descent into open blue with no reference until 27 m. Beginners are well served by the beach and the shallow reefs. General Corsica guides still point divers to the south of the island and Porto-Vecchio, and Lavezzi near Bonifacio, 140 km away, is the better trip for habituated grouper; Calvi's case rests on its own site list. The Scandola reserve's scuba ban, 40 km south, does not apply here.