Istria · Croatia · Wall
San Giovanni Nord
Yellow anemones and sponges on the Sv. Ivan north wall
Area photo: Tanya Dedyukhina · CC BY 3.0
The north side of San Giovanni, Sv. Ivan, off Rovinj, where the wall is covered in yellow encrusting anemones and yellow sponges. The drop from the top runs easily to 18 metres, and from there a second reef sits at 30, so the site works either as a straightforward wall dive or a deeper two-stage one.
Where it is and how deep
45.0474° N, 13.6196° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
The dive is on the north face of San Giovanni island, off Rovinj, and the drop down the wall is an easy one that takes you to about 18 metres. That is where the rock is at its best: the face is covered in yellow encrusting anemones and yellow sponges, dense enough that the colour rather than the topography is what you remember. The whole of that level stays inside recreational depth.
From 18 metres a second reef lies deeper, at 30, and dropping onto it turns this into a deep dive with a correspondingly short bottom time. The sensible order is to visit it early, come back up onto the wall and spend the rest of the dive shallow along the anemone-covered rock, finishing over the top of the island's north side with gas in hand.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-season | Off-season | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair | Off-season |
Season follows Istria: The main season runs 1 May to 31 October; the sea passes 20°C from mid-June to September, and a few sites are diveable only outside the high season.
Sources
- San Giovanni Nord — Scubago
More dive sites in Istria
Wall
A 200 m wall under sponges, bryozoans and soft corals
Wreck
Scout cruiser mined two weeks after the war ended, at 49 m
Cave & cavern
Limestone tunnels, the first passed one diver at a time
Cave & cavern
Shallow caves at 3 to 8 m inside Kamenjak Nature Park
Wreck
Mined in 1943, bow torn away, lying at 48 m
Wreck
A 40 m cargo wreck on the sand off the San Giovanni light
Reef
A terraced plateau reef that few boats visit
Reef
Freshwater springs in the shallows at the Lim Channel mouth
Similar dives elsewhere
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A terrace at 26 m packed with red fan corals and sponges
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