Blu 70, Copanello

The dive

Blu 70 is not the name of a reef. It is the local name of the vasche di Copanello, the rock basins on the cliff coast between the Baia di Caminia and Copanello, on the Ionian side of the Stalettì headland. The diving service at La Cabaña, which works this stretch from Caminia, describes the whole run as a coastal traverse following rock walls onto a sandy bottom, and places the vasche di Copanello, spelled BLU70 in their own text, beyond the Torrazzo as you work up the shore; the Vasche di Cassiodoro, the Roman fish tanks cut into the white granite, come a little further north again. The name is shared with the Blu70 chalet built into these same rocks, eight suites with private access straight into the water and a terrace named after Cassiodorus.

A.S.D. Subamici of Soverato, who registered the site, dive it point to point rather than round a fixed anchor: the dinghy drops the group at one point and picks it up at another, with a boatman following the group up to the surface. They put the profile at about 10 m and the dive at not less than eighty minutes, which is what a 10 m ceiling buys you. La Cabaña give the same figure for the vasche section and say the whole Caminia-to-Copanello run does not exceed 15 m, which is why they also work it after dark and rate it safe for beginners.

What you are looking at is granite. The cliff here is white granite dropping into the sea, cut at the waterline into the basins the dive is named for, with sand at the foot of the wall. The occurrence records around this pin read like the shallow rocky shore that implies: ornate wrasse, damselfish, white seabream, salema, painted comber, wide-eyed flounder on the sand, sea hare, sea cucumber, spiny starfish, black sea urchin, limpets, the warty crab Eriphia verrucosa, the blennies Parablennius sanguinolentus and Aidablennius sphynx in the rock, and the murex shells Bolinus brandaris and Hexaplex trunculus. The single most-recorded animal at this pin is the barrel jellyfish Rhizostoma pulmo, with the fried-egg jellyfish Cotylorhiza tuberculata also on the list.

Two more catalogue pins sit within 450 m, Copanello to the north and Torrazzo to the south, and they are the adjacent segments of the same cliff rather than separate grounds: La Cabaña describe the lot as one run up the coast, each stretch with its own entry and exit. The shoreline at the chalet is private, so the water is reached by boat from Caminia or Copanello.

• The rock basins cut into white granite at the foot of the Copanello cliff
• A 10 m ceiling that turns into eighty minutes or more of bottom time
• Run point to point from a dinghy, dropped at one end and collected at the other
• Worked as a night dive as well as by day

Conditions

A shallow coastal run: granite walls dropping to sand, nothing below about 10 m on the vasche section and nothing below 15 m on the whole Caminia-to-Copanello coast. The operators run it by day and at night. No source publishes a visibility figure or a water temperature for this site.

On current: No source gives a current for this stretch. The dive is run as a traverse, entering at one point and surfacing at another, with a boatman on the group, which is normal practice on a coastal run and not evidence of current either way.

Best months: Jul, Aug, Sep