Cyclops Islands

The dive

This pin sits on the Faraglioni dei Ciclopi themselves, the basalt stacks just off the Aci Trezza seafront that give the Area Marina Protetta Isole Ciclopi its name. The first thing a diver needs to know about it is a rule rather than a reef. The reserve's zonation document defines zone A, the integral reserve, as the stretch of sea surrounding Isola Lachea and the Faraglione Grande, delimited by five yellow buoys, and lists exhaustively what may be done there: rescue and surveillance, authorised scientific research, swimming along two marked strips 30 m out from the cliffs, and access by rowed craft to reach those strips. Diving is not on that list. Anchoring and mooring are forbidden and boats may only hold position on oars while landing visitors on Lachea.

What operators actually dive at the stacks is the water just outside that core, and the reserve's own itinerary for it is the Percorso Faraglione Piccolo: a small rock stack with crevices and shallow banks, worked between 11 and 21 m, graded easy, with light current and what the AMP calls excellent visibility. Trigone Diving, a Catania centre working this coast, describes the same ground from the water: south of the Faraglione di Mezzo, the small stack together with a field of lava boulders makes a series of small shoals, fissures and gaps with a dense concentration of fish. The AMP singles out two animals for this route, the Mediterranean squat lobster, which is very good at not being seen, and Alicia mirabilis, the largest anemone in the Mediterranean, which is why the itinerary is also used after dark from the shore.

So the honest description of this entry is that it is the landmark rather than a single named dive. The catalogue holds eight more pins inside 3 km, most of which map onto the other seven itineraries the reserve publishes (Panettoni, Il Castello, Punta Aguzza, the Capo Mulini lighthouse, the anchor trail). If you are booking a dive at the Cyclops Islands you will be taken to one of those, most often the small stack, and you will go with a centre the managing body has authorised, because in zones B and C guided underwater visits may only be run by authorised centres and any recreational dive needs the managing body's authorisation.

The bottom is volcanic: basalt boulders, crevices and sand rather than coral. OBIS records at this pin are the standard Ionian rocky-shore set — damselfish, ornate and rainbow wrasse, painted comber, salema, Mediterranean parrotfish, white seabream, cardinalfish, goldblotch grouper, Mediterranean moray, the orange starfish Ophidiaster ophidianus and the red starfish Echinaster sepositus. Bottlenose and striped dolphin are both on the record for this water, and so are the three big Mediterranean jellyfish, mauve stinger, barrel jellyfish and fried-egg jellyfish, which turn up in numbers in some summers.

• Basalt stacks and lava boulders with crevices and small shoals rather than coral
• Alicia mirabilis, the largest Mediterranean anemone, and the Mediterranean squat lobster, both named by the reserve for this route
• The reserve's Faraglione Piccolo itinerary is also run as a night dive from shore
• Zone A around Lachea and the Faraglione Grande is closed to divers

Conditions

Sheltered volcanic rock a short way off a village beach, light current and, in the reserve's own words, excellent visibility. No source publishes a visibility figure in metres for this site.

On current: The AMP grades the Faraglione Piccolo itinerary easy with light current and excellent visibility. The depths carried here, 11 to 21 m, are the reserve's figures for that itinerary rather than for the stacks as a whole; the water immediately around the Faraglione Grande and Isola Lachea is zone A and is not dived at all.