Scuba diving at Punta della Focacciola

Scuba diving here is easy and can also be full of surprises. You can swim round the entire sandbank because it is only 20/25 metres below the surface.

The walls are full of gorges and tunnels from where octopus, moray and conger eels often peek out, and on the western side of the sandbank you will also see groupers and dreamfish searching for food amongst the seaweed that lies on the seabed

Sea bream, saddled bream and damselfish will constantly keep you company, as will nudibranchs, sea spirographs and anemones.

If you head back to your boat from the eastern side of the sandbank you will get to a large bed of sedimentary sand - where the monument dedicated to "JACQUES MAYOL" sits - that separates the sandbank from the Gemini Islands.

Thisfamous French free diver, who had chosen to live in Elba and who died in 2001 in his home in Capoliveri, was a deep lover of the sea, and in 1976 he was the first deep diver to go down as far as 100 m.

As you get nearer the tip of the sandbank, at a depth of more or less 10 metres, you will see the entrance to a grotto that goes through the rock for several metres. The vault and the walls are covered in false coral, sea daisies and sponges. In the parts where there is less light you might even come across some beautiful squilla mantis.

If you pay close attention you will see the two small tunnels that, if you go through, will get you back out to the tip of the sandbank.

Photographs kindly supplied by Riccardo Buralli- Diving in Elba