The mayor of Apokoronas, Haralambos Koukianakis, has announced that the creation of a dive park in Apokoronas has been included in the Cretan Regional Authority’s development plan for 2021-2025 under the Priority Category “Promotion of facilities for alternative forms of tourism (health and wellness, city breaks, agrotourism, mountain tourism etc.)”.
According to the announcement, the action is to be funded by the National Development Programme and relates to the creation of a recreational dive park at Ombrogialos beach in the northern part of Almirou Bay, south of Cape Drapanos. The area is administratively part of the municipality of Vamos.
Ombrogialos beach is rocky with steep inclines and deep water, exposed to the waves from the north east. There is little tourist activity in the area and a lack of basic infrastructure. The rudimentary harbour facilities, which are close to the proposed dive park, consist of a jetty and a slipway for launching boats. They are used as a base by divers heading for the Elephant Cave a few kilometres to the north.
The dive park will be situated between the depths of 8 and 25 metres, where the bottom slopes gently and is composed of sandy stretches with rocky outcrops and seagrass meadows.
For the implementation and smooth functioning of the dive park, a number of individual works and interventions will be needed to create an organised facility which is fit for purpose. The aim is to create a strong centre of attraction in the fast developing sector of sea diving tourism. Such places also tend to add value by creating homes for shoals of fish, thus increasing the area’s attraction.
The works required include the addition and removal of material in places on the sea bed, and the installation of the elements indispensable for the creation and functioning of a recreational dive park, namely accessible undersea features (artificial reefs and sunken ships), direction signs and lighting, and mooring points for visitors’ boats.
In making the announcement, the mayor of Apokoronas expressed his satisfaction with the development, since numerous bureaucratic obstacles had had to be overcome in order to bring the “labyrinthine” process to a conclusion. It had required 46 approvals and decisions by 8 ministers, and two joint ministerial decisions before its final publication in the Government Gazette (FEK). The effort had begun in the autumn of 2014 and its implementation will bring added value to the municipality’s tourist product, he said. Execution of the project is scheduled to begin on 20th March 2023 and to be completed by 31st December 2024.