The Castle

The dive

"The Castle" is the English label a dive-site catalogue hung on Il Castello, one of the eight published underwater itineraries of the Isole Ciclopi marine protected area. The castle in question is the Norman one at Aci Castello, built on a black lava crag straight above the water, and the dive is the seabed directly beneath it. Both the marine park and Trigone Diving of Catania describe the same thing: a wide rockfall of large basaltic blocks that runs down and stops on sand, cut through with crevices and small canyons.

The park gives the working range as 18 to 22 m and grades it easy, with excellent visibility and light current; Trigone gives the same numbers. The crevices in the boulder field hold brown meagre, grouper and scorpionfish. Once the rock gives out and you are over the sand the encounters change: rays, torpedo rays and anglerfish are all on Trigone's list, but the animal both sources single out is the pearly razorfish, Xyrichthys novacula, which lives on the open sand and vanishes into it with one flick when you get close. It is the reason people dive this particular patch rather than the neighbouring rockfalls at Casa del Principe or the Antico Macello, which are described in almost the same words.

The whole area is inside the AMP Isole Ciclopi, which runs from Punta Aguzza to Capo Molini and is zoned. Zone A, closed to recreational diving, is only the water immediately around Isola Lachea and the Faraglione Grande, marked with five yellow buoys; the castle is outside it. In zones B and C diving and snorkelling are allowed, but they need an authorisation from the managing consortium, either a day permit or a monthly or annual one for private divers, or the separate guided-visit authorisation that commercial operators hold. Fees are paid through the park's own online payments portal.

The records logged around this pin match what the two dive descriptions say: grouper (Epinephelus costae), scorpionfish, moray, octopus, cuttlefish, cardinalfish, damselfish, parrotfish and the usual wrasse and seabream, plus bottlenose dolphin and striped dolphin offshore.

• Pearly razorfish (Xyrichthys novacula) burying themselves in the open sand
• A rockfall of large basalt blocks straight below the Norman castle of Aci Castello
• Crevices and small canyons holding brown meagre, grouper and scorpionfish
• Rays, torpedo rays and anglerfish on the sand beyond the boulders
• One of the eight itineraries the Isole Ciclopi marine park publishes

Conditions

A short boat run off the Aci Castello waterfront to a basalt rockfall that ends on sand at about 22 m. The park's own itinerary sheet records excellent visibility and light current as normal, and grades the route easy.

On current: Both the marine park's itinerary sheet and Trigone Diving describe the current here as light and the visibility as excellent. Neither mentions surge or a wind direction that closes the site, which is consistent with a dive tucked under a headland on the Ionian side of Sicily rather than an exposed point like Punta Aguzza a few kilometres south, where the same sources describe drift diving for experienced divers only.