Grotta dei Gamberetti

This dive site is located on the southwestern coast of the island of Ustica, at “Punta Galera“. Here, the tongue of land extends southward and continues below the sea surface. The emerged part of this point is very jagged and delimits the two coves. Mooring usually takes place in the westernmost cove, and the dive begins with a descent into the shallow waters of the bay.

Following the profile of the coastline southward, we swim over a Posidonia meadow. For some divers this might seem like an uninteresting start, but to the more observant it reveals itself as incredibly rich in life and interesting. Among the posidonia leaves, various types of colorful wrasse, sea bream, saddled sea bream, cuttlefish, noble pen shells hide, and it’s not difficult to spot the pipefish and more rarely the seahorse.

We continue to follow the coastline where at 20m the seabed becomes rocky. Here we find a beautiful arch we can pass through that leads us right to the entrance of the cave. The bottom of the cave is rocky and rises upward to shallower depths. We follow the slope of the cave, while admiring the interesting marine life hiding within; parapandalo shrimp, mechanical shrimp and slipper lobsters usually reside inside.

We exit the cave through the same passage used to enter, and from here, we head back towards the dinghy. Before resurfacing, we can spend some time observing the marine life found in the shallow waters of Punta Galera bay while we let the safety stop time pass.