Punta del Faro

You drop on the mooring into a jumble of boulders leaning against one another, and the first job is finding the line through them: the slabs stack into tunnels and large crevices you swim between rather than over. Just beyond 20 m an eastward passage runs between two big rocks and opens into a wider zone of scattered, collapsed rock. Yellow madrepores cover the boulders at the point itself, and yellow zoanthids — Parazoanthus axinellae — stand out on the outcrops.

Deeper, the slope steepens and the large red gorgonians begin. This is the part of the dive that earns the depth, and also where the current is felt most. Red coral is set back in the numerous crevices and grottos rather than out on open rock. Groupers, sea bream, corvina and small red amberjack work the boulder ground, and moray and conger eels hold in the holes between them.

The site sits under the lighthouse on the exposed tip of the promontory and is subject to underwater currents of some strength, strongest along the slopes where the gorgonians grow, so the dive is planned around them: drop on the mooring, work the deep ground while gas allows, then come back up through the boulder field into the brighter shallow rock and ascend inside the 50 m circle.