a local sponge fisherman and his teenage son discovered the Peristera, an enormous vessel that sank around 425 B.C. off the east coast of Alonissos. Dubbed the Parthenon of shipwrecks, the Peristera was one of the largest classical ships ever found. With no written records, archaeologists have had to deduce the story of the wreck, which was probably a two-sailed merchant ship plying between Athens and the Black Sea.
At the port, I noticed a hole-in-the-wall dive shop, the Seacolours Dive Center. I asked the owner, Panos Anagnostou, who had a tattoo of a scorpion on his back, how long it would take to get an Advanced Certification. He shrugged: Five dives in three days. “It’s not so hard.” Could I do the course, then dive the wreck on the morning before my ferry left? “Why not?” he said. “If the weather is good.” Suddenly, the wreck was within my grasp again.
Day two was even more idyllic. We dove around a twisted finger of volcanic rock in the roughly 850-square-mile Marine Park, exploring an underwater shelf covered with leaves of soft coral that glittered like gold coins in the sun. Large fish—goldblotch, dogtooth and dusky groupers—swam past. Moray eels emerged from crevices, baring their fangs; a small squid shot past with a burst of black ink.
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