Hirizo Beach

You start at Nakagi port, where the small boats cross to the cove in about five minutes and run on a two to five minute cycle through the season, so there is rarely a wait either way. There is no path in over the headland: the boat is the only way in and the only way out. The cove is screened by the island standing in front of it rather than facing the open sea directly, which is what makes it unusual among the Izu beaches you have to be ferried to.

The buoyed area covers everything from the shallows out to around 20 metres. The bottom is mixed — drop-offs, beds of white sand, rocky reef — and on a good day the water is clear enough to pick out the seabed five metres down from the surface. Blue-green damselfish work the rock in numbers, and the Kuroshio carries tropical strays in each summer alongside the residents: clownfish, moray eels, filefish, pufferfish and nudibranchs, with rays, ocean sunfish and the occasional turtle further out.

The drop-off sits at the outermost edge of the buoyed area and is where the branching coral grows, colonies rare for this stretch of coast. It draws divers as well as snorkellers, and it is the one part of the cove described as a spot for advanced visitors, so treat the swim out to it as the serious part of the day rather than an extension of the paddle. Everything shoreward of it is shallow enough that a mask and snorkel see most of what is there.