Moregallo - Le macchine

The dive

Le macchine, 'the cars', is a freshwater dive on the Moregallo shore of the Lecco branch of Lake Como. Entry is from shore, about five minutes from Valmadrera, down a cement staircase with uneven steps to the beach. From there divers follow a wall, and the wall is the site: it drops steeply and the wrecks are strewn down it.

The first cars appear at roughly 27 to 30 m. Local press and diver reports put the shallowest vehicles at about 15 m and the deepest at 65 to 70 m, with more than fifty vehicles and around 250 tyres documented: Fiat 500s, a Renault 4, an Innocenti Mini, a VW Passat, a Land Cruiser, a Mercedes, Piaggio scooters and motorcycles. The accepted local explanation is that they were stolen and dumped over the road above after robberies, which is a hypothesis rather than a proven fact, but it is the one every local account gives.

That range is why the site reads as two different dives. On the shallow cars it is a guided recreational dive. In the 40 to 60 m band it is a technical dive, and it should be planned as one. This matters more here than almost anywhere else in this catalogue: Il Giorno counts at least seven diver deaths at Moregallo since 2008, attributed to extreme depth, decompression violations and rapid ascents, with silt, algae and rocky crevasses as contributing factors. A site where the interesting objects get deeper the further you go, on a wall with no natural stopping point, is a site that punishes curiosity.

Conditions are freshwater and cold. Divers report about 12 C at 18 m and 4 to 5 C at 60 to 80 m in winter, with drysuits normal from November to June. Visibility is described as good but not optimal, greenish near shore. The lake surface is at about 197 to 198 m above sea level, below the threshold where altitude-diving procedures are normally applied, so cold, buoyancy and depth are the real variables. Fauna is sparse and freshwater; our occurrence records for the area return brown trout, Prussian carp and freshwater blenny.

• Over 50 sunken vehicles and about 250 tyres down a steep lake wall
• First cars at roughly 27 to 30 m, shallowest at about 15 m, deepest at 65 to 70 m
• Shore entry five minutes from Valmadrera
• Reads as a recreational dive shallow and a technical dive deep

Conditions

Freshwater, no current, cold and dark with depth. Reported temperatures are about 12 C at 18 m and 4 to 5 C at 60 to 80 m in winter, with drysuits normal from November through June. Visibility is described as good but not optimal, greenish near shore. The wall is steep and silted.

On current: No current: this is a lake. Visibility is described as good but not optimal, greener near shore. Sources disagree on the deepest wrecks, giving 65 or 70 m; we record the conservative 65 m, and either figure is well past recreational limits.

Dives & underwater footage

Life at Moregallo - Le macchine

This is fresh water, so there is no reef life to log. We do not carry an occurrence record for inland sites: the scientific databases we use are marine, and the nearest records would come from whatever lake or river is in the search radius rather than from the water you dive.