La Madonnina

The dive

This is the Alghero Madonnina, not the submerged statue of the same name that Italian divers visit elsewhere. It sits under the Capo Caccia massif, a single block of rock 186 m high, and the name comes from an effigy of the Madonna painted across six ceramic tiles and set into a niche in the southern face of the cliff. Nostra Senyora del Fruntuni was put there in the late 1800s by the corallini, the coral fishermen from Torre del Greco who worked this coast, as protector of everyone who works at sea. The park's own dive table places the site at 40 deg 33.612 N, 8 deg 9.816 E, in zone B of the Capo Caccia - Isola Piana marine protected area.

Underwater it is a single large cavern rather than a tight cave. Adventure & Diving of Alghero give the mouth as roughly 40 m wide and 10 m high with a run of arches along its right-hand side, and a depth range of 6 to 20 m; Alghero Divers give the cavern itself as sitting between 12 and 16 m. The opening faces south, which is why it stays lit and why the growth inside is as heavy as it is. The vaults carry Parazoanthus axinellae and Leptopsammia pruvoti dense enough to turn the roof yellow, with sponges in several colours below them. The floor is mostly sand and holds a good number of large Cerianthus tube anemones.

Behind the cavern the character changes completely. A tunnel roughly 100 m long runs inward to a chamber where stalactites drop into the sand. Adventure & Diving are explicit that this section is for equipped cave divers only, and grade the difficulty of the site as running from minimal at the mouth to maximum in the tunnel. The same source flags strong currents outside the cave as the site's distinguishing hazard, which is not something the other descriptions mention.

On the run in you pass octopus, moray, dentex and grouper along the cliff, and with luck a school of amberjack. Capo Galera, who also run this dive, report large schools of barracuda directly in front of the cave. The park lists La Madonnina among its authorised submerged caves and caps it at 6 divers per dive and 3 dives a day, one of the tightest quotas in the AMP.

• Cavern mouth roughly 40 m wide and 10 m high with arches down the right side
• Vaults yellow with Parazoanthus axinellae and Leptopsammia pruvoti
• Sand floor with a good number of large Cerianthus
• A 100 m tunnel to a stalactite chamber, cave divers only
• Ceramic Madonna in the cliff niche above, placed by Torre del Greco coral fishermen in the late 1800s
• Barracuda schooling in front of the cave, octopus, moray, dentex and grouper on the approach

Conditions

Boat dive against the south face of the Capo Caccia massif, daylight only, tied to a park mooring with the dive confined to a 50 m radius. The south-facing mouth keeps the cavern lit; the wall outside can run strong current.

On current: Adventure & Diving list the presence of strong currents outside the cave as the site's particular feature, which is the single most important thing to know before booking it; neither Alghero Divers nor Capo Galera mentions current at all, so treat the strong-current reading as the planning case. The park rule that the dive must stay within 50 m of the vertical of the mooring buoy applies here as everywhere in zones B and C, so this is not a dive you drift. Inside the cavern itself the two wide-open aspects mean the water is generally calmer than on the wall outside.