Red Coral

Extreme Diving and the Plunder of Red Coral in the Mediterranean

For Captain Leonardo Fusco the discovery of the sea started at the age of nine. Years later while snorkeling off the coast of Palinuro, he discovered a branch of Corallium Rubrum (red coral) that for centuries has been widely traded and highly valued in the jewelry industry. As a result of this discovery, he started to search for coral and soon he became the first corallaro. He collected the precious red branches while breathing air from a scuba cylinder on his back, and after being licensed as an off- shore captain in 1950, he kept practicing this dangerous and mysterious profession for over thirty years. He then travelled to anywhere in the world that the presence of red coral was known or suspected: in Sardinia, then Costa Azzurra, Costa Brava, Morocco and for five long years in Tunisia, and finally in Japan.