Regional and national entities are urged to create a comprehensive network of MPAs that will preserve these underwater jewels.

Portuguese man-of-war sighted at Mediterranean beaches

Italian authorities have found the wreck of a ship sunk by the Mafia with 180 barrels of toxic waste on board

What does a fish exporter from Norway, a Chief Information Officer and diving instructor living in the Netherlands, a renowned lawyer based in Cyprus, a Project Manager working in Sweden, and an expat French Technical Diving Instructor have in common?

It was one of those highly unlikely chains of unforeseable events that led us to Elba the pictoresque but somewhat mislaid lump of land in the Meditterean made famous by emperor Napoleon’s exile here: The fact that the treasureship Polluce was finally being excavated.

Like every grand tale of shipwreck and lost treasure, the story about the Polluce has it all. A paddlewheel steamboat shipwrecked in 1841, it is the centrepiece of a drama spanning more than one and a half centuries and has all the necessary ingredients: drama and tragedy, greed and crime, passion and politics. And it is still ongoing. Polluce is about to be excavated once more as this story goes to press.

We were headed for the island of Kefalonia off the western coast of mainland Greece. This would be the starting point of the “Life Amphibious” underwater odyssey. The plan was to pedal a human-powered submarine 15 nautical miles (28 kilometres) through the Ionian Sea to mythical Ithaca, the home of Ulysses. In the spirit of Homer’s epic and Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, we would soon begin our own grand voyage to Ithaca.

I made up my mind quite a long time ago about whether or not I should entrust you with one of my favourite holiday destinations. Tamariu is not like any other small port town in which one can swim, dive and eat well. No! Tamariu is my little secret, and I share it already with quite a lot of other insiders. But if you like, I will initiate you now.

An international team of researchers has studied the coralline algae fossils that lived on the last coral reefs of the Mediterranean Sea between 7.24 and 5.3 million years ago. Mediterranean algae and coral reefs began to resemble present day reefs following the isolation of the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean and global cooling 15 and 20 million years ago respectively.

After a two year long search, French divers Florent M. Locatelli, Lerome Espla and Romain Lhost reach and identify the wreck of the steamer Maréchal Canrobert resting at a depth of 108m.