Marettimo, Sicily, Italy

Punta Troia

Punta Troia, beneath the seventeenth-century Spanish fort at the northern tip of Marettimo, is the most iconic dive of the wildest Egadi island. Marettimo lies at the western edge of the Mediterranean shelf and its waters are notably clear. The dive descends along a vertical wall from a shallow rocky shelf around 10 metres to roughly 45 metres on a sandy and rocky base. The wall hosts dense yellow Eunicella cavolini fans on the upper sections and red gorgonian (Paramuricea clavata) forests below 25 metres, with orange Astroides calycularis on shaded faces, yellow Parazoanthus axinellae and red and yellow encrusting sponges. Schools of barracuda, amberjack and dentex cruise the blue; resident dusky groupers, brown meagre, conger eels, large octopus, moray eels and scorpionfish populate the cracks. Visibility regularly exceeds 30 metres in summer. Currents can be moderate around the cape. The site lies within the Egadi MPA, the largest in the Mediterranean.