Taikosan Maru Wreck

The dive

The wreck off the Timpa di Acireale was dived for about thirty years as the Terni, an Italian motor vessel lost in 1943. It is not. Two years of archive work by Captain Andrea Di Mauro of the Acireale Locamare, with underwater survey by the Aci Castello volunteer group Futuro Mare, Lloyd's Register in London and the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records in Tokyo, identified her in January 2022 as the Taikosan Maru, a Japanese-flagged steam collier. On 14 December 1917 she was running for Syracuse close inshore with her lights out, as the Italian naval command required in submarine-patrolled water, when she met the steamer Ancona coming the other way toward Messina under the same orders. The collision opened her hull and she went down at 05:30 in the stretch known as Acqua Grande, between Capo Mulini and Santa Maria La Scala. A bilingual bronze plaque was laid on the wreck and unveiled ashore at Santa Maria La Scala on 30 April 2022. You will see the name spelled Toikosan on some dive listings; the official Sicilian and Japanese records spell it Taikosan.

The dive is about twenty minutes by RIB from Capomulini. You go down the anchor chain from around 6 m and follow the lava slope until it drops into the blue at about 38 m; a diving-press report of the plaque laying puts the wreck nearer 40 m, so plan for the deeper figure. From 20 to 25 m the hull is already visible below you, and she lies capsized: the first things you reach are the propeller and the rudder, both pointing upward. The second half of the dive runs along the flank at what is probably the point of impact.

From there the operator's route penetrates the hull for about 15 m in a straight line, entered and exited in sight of daylight at both ends, with a torch for the shrimps and grouper inside. You come out through a second tear near the bow, which took no damage and is intact, and start up the adjacent lava wall following the big anchor chain lying against it. The fish list the centre gives is sea bream, moray, grouper, octopus and hermit crabs, on a hull that is now heavily encrusted.

This is not an open site. Because it is a historic wreck, diving it is otherwise prohibited: the dive centre that runs it holds nulla osta from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali del Mare and from the Capitaneria di Porto di Catania that allow guided dives. Note also that a local diver's channel posted footage in July 2026 titled "I danni del ciclone Harri al Taikosan Maru", so the state of the hull and the bow may no longer match descriptions written before that storm.

• Capsized Japanese collier, sunk 14 December 1917 in a blacked-out wartime collision
• Propeller and rudder standing upward as the first contact with the hull
• About 15 m of straight-line penetration, daylight at both ends
• Intact bow and the ship's anchor chain running up the adjacent lava wall
• Bilingual commemorative plaque laid on the wreck in 2022

Conditions

About twenty minutes by RIB from Capomulini, then a descent on the anchor chain from roughly 6 m down a lava slope that falls into the blue. The hull comes into view from 20 to 25 m. Bottom time is short at this depth, and the route is fixed: propeller and rudder, then the flank, then the penetration and the bow, then up the wall on the chain.

On current: No source we read publishes current or visibility figures for the site. What the operator's own route tells you is that the descent is made on the anchor chain from about 6 m rather than free, and the ascent follows the wreck's anchor chain up the lava wall, which is how a team stays together on an exposed Ionian coast. The two published depths disagree: the dive centre and the PADI listing built from it say the seabed drops to 38 m, a report of the plaque laying says about 40 m. We have taken 40 m.