Secca d'Africa

The dive

Secca d'Africa is a shallow reef off the western side of Ustica, a few hundred metres out from the coast between the Punta Spalmatore lighthouse and Punta Cavazzi. Altamarea Diving Center places the three pinnacles that give the shoal its name at 9 to 12 m and puts them about 350 m from the lighthouse; Evasioni Blu marks the site with a yellow buoy just north of Punta Cavazzi. The dive normally starts down the buoy line to about 10 m and then runs out to the rocky crest of the shoal.

The structure is a tangle of large blocks rather than a single wall: inlets, small caves, tunnels and canyons opening between the rock, with fine sand in the gaps. Evasioni Blu gives a working range of 10 to 25 m and describes a big arch with a pinnacle full of crevices behind it; Ustica Diving Center takes the same ground further out and down, quoting 15 to 40 m as the site's full span onto sand. Around the rock there is posidonia, which is where the crustaceans sit.

The reason the site is signposted rather than merely dived is archaeological: three anchor remains of Roman and Byzantine date lie at roughly 10 m, and both centres that describe the dive treat it as a marked underwater itinerary. Nothing may be lifted.

For life, the shoal reads as a well-stocked Mediterranean rock. Dusky grouper are recorded here in numbers, along with parrotfish, salema, painted comber, ornate and rainbow wrasse, damselfish, moray, octopus and slipper lobster; nudibranchs including Flabellina affinis, Cratena peregrina and Peltodoris atromaculata are common on the rock, and schools of Sphyraena viridensis pass through. Operators add corvina as characteristic of the site and seasonal visits from jacks and bonito.

• Three pinnacles topping out at 9-12 m
• Three Roman and Byzantine anchor remains at about 10 m
• A large arch with a crevice-filled pinnacle behind it
• Dusky grouper in numbers, plus nudibranchs on the rock
• Shallow enough to be a genuine Open Water dive

Conditions

A moored, shallow boat dive on a marked buoy. Both centres describe it as adaptable to the group, which suggests conditions are normally benign; it faces the open west side of the island, so swell rather than current is what closes it.

On current: Published depths disagree in a way worth knowing about before you plan. Altamarea puts the pinnacle tops at 9-12 m, Evasioni Blu gives the reef 10-24 m and the dive 10-25 m, and Ustica Diving Center describes the same ground running from 15 m out to 40 m on sand. Treat 25 m as the ordinary dive and anything deeper as a deliberate extension. The same Altamarea text also says the site lies about six miles west of the port of Ustica, which cannot be right for an island barely three kilometres across; the 350 m from the Punta Spalmatore lighthouse figure, and the other two centres, put it a short hop off the west coast.