I went scuba diving to Sv. Marina, Croatia which started as an early weekend. I visited this location a few times this year and I am always happy to return.
The reef is accessible from the shore and the entry is in the middle. You can go on the right wall or the left wall, both locations offer different experiences but both are worth seeing.
Night diving is also worth it. When you see giant spider crabs climbing from the crevices you saw during the day and thought nothing could possibly be inside it really makes you think just how much you don’t see during the day.
This location was also the first and currently only time I saw a marbled electric ray. Unfortunately, no pictures as I didn’t take my camera on the night dive.
We did a total of 6 dives, so 2 per day. Looking back at my logbook I didn’t have my deep diving course done yet. This means that compared to other times I visited I only saw less than half of the reef.
Since it was quite early in the year, there were not many scuba divers and people in general. This usually means that you can see more as fish don’t yet hide as much.
The pictures
At that time you could see a population of huge barrel jellyfish. You would regularly see specimens with a diameter of up to 50 cm. The one in the picture was probably slightly less, I would estimate a bit over 40 cm.
Also interesting is the conger eel. They hide in such unusual places where you wouldn’t expect anything to fit in. If you happen to see one outside hunting, you can consider yourself lucky. I was lucky enough to see one hunting on one of my night dives.
A few more pictures of nudibranchs, a spider crab, and a starfish. Both the spider crab and the starfish blend extremely well in the sand.
If you go to the left wall, there are several heads placed on a plateau. A vase acts as a marker. In general, the dives are quite easy and with lots of natural or artificial markers. The one tricky part is on the right wall if you go too far out.
If you are looking for the depth you get this right from the shore. And if you would prefer to stay shallow the reef starts quite shallow so you don’t need to go deep. The location certainly covers a broad range of scuba divers.
These corals are quite difficult to photograph. I managed to get better pictures over time but I will need to try some more before I can get the one picture I will be completely satisfied with.
And for the highlight the tiniest of snails. This one was on the larger side and it was about 1 cm in length.
Conclusion
On this scuba diving weekend, I did my first scuba dive after a few months break. You can definitely see it in the pictures. If you compare them with some of my latest ones you should see an improvement. At that time I also used my camera only for 2 weeks in Egypt so I didn’t have a lot of experience with it yet.
But practice makes perfect and I am slowly improving.
I also quite like the location itself. Depending on the time of year you are usually able to see something different. And if you are interested in wrecks, the Lina wreck is accessible from the diving center by boat. I can only recommend it.