Trip Report: Scuba Diving in Portofino, Italy

Introduction 

We’ve been lucky enough to spend some extended time in Milan over the summer this year and so we decided to organise a weekend of scuba diving in in early July. The train takes two hours from Milan and as with most of the trains in Europe, it’s fast, comfortable and affordable. I really wish the UK would learn something from Europe on how to do train travel properly. 

Santa Margherita Ligure & Portofino

Portofino and Santa Margherita are on the Ligurian sea, 40km east of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. Portofino is famed for its colourfully painted buildings – like most of the Italian Riviera – and is now frequented by much of the world’s rich and famous. We opted to stay 4km north in Santa Margherita Ligure where accommodation and eating out is half the price but you’re only a 15 minute ferry or 15 minute bus ride from Portofino itself. Staying in Santa Margherita gives the added benefit of being close to the train station (10 minute walk from the centre) and our dive centre of choice for the trip: Portofino Divers. We stayed on Via Marsala; 100m from the water and 120m from the dive shop. 

The food in Santa Margherita Ligure (as in most of Italy) was incredible. It’s a relatively touristy place (a mix of Italians and international visitors) but the food and drink were awesome and affordable (~€10 for a main dish, ~€6 for half a litre of local wine) at all the restaurants we visited.

Portofino itself is beautiful and well worth a visit post-dive. The ferries run frequently from the main pier in Santa Margherita Ligure.

The Diving

We had one weekend in Portofino which meant four dives over two days. That felt like a good number given neither of us had been in the water for almost 12 months (and it was almost three years since we’d dived in a wetsuit having been confined to British waters thanks to you-know-what).

Portofino Divers are an impressive set-up and offer recreational and technical diving (many of the wrecks in the area are well outside recreational diving depths). We’re not (yet) tech certified so it was <30m diving for us. Luckily there was still plenty to see.

We met at the dive centre on Saturday at 8am and were introduced to Gaia, our Divemaster for the weekend. We were fitted with rental equipment which included backplates and wings rather than traditional jacket style BCDs and a 5mm long sleeve wetsuit. Gaia (and all the other Portofino Divers team) would be diving in a dry suit – usually a good sign that a 5mm wetsuit might not be enough for the water temperature…more on that later. For regulators, they use a long hose system with backup regulator on a necklace – this was my first time using that configuration but the team demonstrated the hose routing and got us comfortable with the set-up. The gear was well looked after and in good condition. 

After kitting up we walked two minutes down the road to the boat and loaded up. We joined seven other divers on the boat plus the captain Bruno (who is also the owner of the dive centre) and a second Divemaster, Simon. The boat was spacious, had good shade (important for my Scottish skin in the Italian sun) and also fast. We would be diving in two groups: five of us with Gaia and the remaining four diving with Simon.

We motored out of the marina towards Portofino before passing numerous superyachts (including this and this) rounding Punta del Faro and speeding west into the Portofino Marine Protected Area where we’d be spending our time diving over the weekend. All-in it took no more than 20 minutes to get from the marina to the dive site.

The dive sites are all marked by buoys and we moored up in the bay of San Fruttuoso near to the Cristo degli Abissi (Christ of the Abyss) for our first dive. The 2.5m high Cristo degli Abissi is a bronze statue, placed on the sea floor in 1954 to commemorate Italian diver Dario Gonzatti – one of Italy’s first scuba divers – who died while diving in 1947.

We dropped into the water with a giant stride off the back of the boat before descending down the anchor line into 26°C water (which later dropped to a low of 19.5°C on this dive). We descended to around 10m, tweaked our buoyancy and were immediately greeted by the sight of the Cristo degli Abissi. Visibility wasn’t fantastic at this point (5-10m) so we spent a few minutes checking out the statue before swimming east with the wall on our left. As we moved further along the wall, visibility improved to around 15m and we continued descending to our max depth of 19m. After around 20 minutes swimming, we doubled back towards our starting point, ascended for a safety stop and jumped back on the boat for our surface interval.

Fifty minutes later, following our surface interval, we were back in the water, this time at Punta della Torretta quickly dropping down the anchor (with a brief trip back up the line to retrieve a diver’s forgotten weights) and down to a max depth of 23m. It was really quite cold (17°C) and in a 5mm wetsuit with no hood or gloves, I was quickly wishing I’d brought my drysuit. Luckily as we ascended back above ~18m, the temperature rose back above 20°C.

My limited diving experience in the Mediterranean meant I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of sea life in the water. We saw schools of Barracuda, Sea Bream, Blue Damselfish, Groupers, Morays and Meagres. One of the highlights was swimming through a huge school of Salema – see 0:48 in the video above. 

Day two was a similar story though we had a slightly later start having already arranged our rental gear on the Saturday. We motored out the same way, past the same superyachts and into the Marine Park. 

Our first dive was at Targa Gonzatti with a max depth of 19m and a water temperature low of 18°C. Sea life was similar to day one with the highlight being a Mediterranean Moray swimming in and out between the rocks at around 12m. On our second dive we descended to 27m at Scoglio del Diamante and into the coldest water yet at 15.5°C. I added a hood for day two but that didn’t stop the cold penetrating straight through to my bones. We spent a few minutes checking out some incredible red fan coral along a wall before quickly ascending back into warm water. After watching a group of five fish feast on jellyfish at the safety stop, we were back on the boat and heading home.

Summary Stats

• Date: 9^th and 10^th July 2022
• Dive Log: #55, #56, #57 and #58
• Max depth: 27m
• Max water temp: 26°C (79°F)
• Min water temp: 15.5°C (60°F) at 27m – there’s a thermocline which means it’s generally at least 20°C (68°F) above 15m but drops quite rapidly below that
• Exposure protection: 5mm full length wetsuit, booties and hood. For one day of shallow diving this was fine. I’d generally recommend a drysuit if you run cold and / or you plan on diving for more than one day below 15-20m.

I really enjoyed our four dives in Portofino and plan to return one day, hopefully with a technical diving certification so I can investigate some of the wrecks.