Lighthouse Wall

The dive

"Lighthouse Wall" is an English label in a dive-site catalogue, not a name anyone uses on this coast, and the pin sits a few hundred metres off the lighthouse that dominates Capo Molini, at the northern boundary of the Isole Ciclopi marine protected area. The surrounding catalogue entries in the same cluster are all translations of the site list published by Trigone Diving of Catania (Canalone, Panettoni, Percorso archeologico, Punta Aguzza, Il Castello), and Trigone has a site called exactly Parete del Faro: a wall about 30 m long at roughly 18 m, reserved for divers who already hold an Open Water certificate. You drop down the guide line and arrive close to the lip, from where the whole face is in view at once.

The complication is that Trigone also runs a second, different dive on the same headland, and the marine park publishes it as one of its eight official itineraries: Faro di Capo Molini. That one is boat-only, starts about 30 m off the rocks on a basalt platform that breaks off into a steep rockfall, runs from 15 to 40 m, is graded medium-hard with moderate current, and can be done as a drift by experienced divers. Late summer and autumn are when the park's own sheet says large pelagics turn up along it. Which of the two the catalogue pin was meant to mark cannot be resolved from the position alone, so plan for the deeper of the two and ask the centre which route it is running.

What is not in doubt is the marine park. Diving and snorkelling in zones B and C need an authorisation from the managing consortium: a daily or monthly/annual permit for private divers, a separate guided-visit authorisation for the centres, paid through the park's own online portal. Zone A, closed to recreational diving, is only the water around Isola Lachea and the Faraglione Grande, well south of here.

The biological records logged around this pin lean heavily towards small, slow-moving life rather than fish: dotted sea slug (Peltodoris atromaculata) grazing the sponges, Felimare tricolor, Cratena peregrina, Flabellina affinis, Thuridilla hopei and Elysia timida, alongside long-spined urchin, sea stars and boring sponge. Among the fish, swallowtail seaperch, forkbeard, moray, scorpionfish, parrotfish and painted comber all appear. It is a wall to dive slowly with a torch and a close-focus lens, not one to swim.

• A short vertical face you can take in from the lip, reached down a guide line
• A basalt platform that breaks off into a steep rockfall on the deeper route
• Large pelagics along the headland in late summer and autumn, per the park's own sheet
• A dense nudibranch record: dotted sea slug, Cratena peregrina, Flabellina affinis, Thuridilla hopei
• The northern boundary of the Isole Ciclopi marine protected area, next to the Timpa reserve

Conditions

A boat dive off the Capo Molini headland at the northern edge of the marine park. Visibility is recorded as excellent on both the park's and the centre's sheets; the current is described as moderate on the Faro itinerary and is the variable that decides whether the day is a static wall dive or a drift.

On current: The two named dives on this headland have different profiles and the pin does not separate them. Trigone Diving's Parete del Faro is a wall of about 30 m length at roughly 18 m, entered down a guide line and open to anyone holding Open Water. The marine park's Faro di Capo Molini itinerary, which Trigone also lists separately, runs 15 to 40 m on a basalt platform and rockfall about 30 m off the coast, is graded medium-hard with moderate current, and is dived in current by experienced divers. The depth range recorded here spans both, which is the conservative reading.

Best months: Aug, Sep, Oct