This ancient “land” on Europe’s southeast corner is blessed with 16,000 kilometers of coastline along its mainland and island shores, and many visiting tourists are keen to explore Neptune’s treasures. As long as you’re in fairly robust health, dive centers around the country offer courses to get your feet wet on that open-water excursion. But while fascinating opportunities already exist, most of the aqua-lunged are keen to see more dive areas open up.

The government announced it is codifying tourism-related regulations into law, including marine tourism. The new legislation is expected this month, and what will be most welcome for divers are changes in certification rules and provisions for underwater parks.

A European standard (requirements for recreational scuba diving providers) has been drawn up, and nearly 100% of the recommendations have been met by 19 of the 20 countries that are a party to it, says the merchant marine ministry’s Yiorgos Vourekas.

“If the international organizations that currently offer diving courses meet or exceed the European standard, the training system will be recognized by the Greek government,” he said. “So anybody from the European Union and even from other countries who has permission to work in Greece and has a recognized diploma can be an instructor.” Another change will be that at least two people have to go on a dive.

The more the merrier
The day after the new law is passed, the number of diving centers will more than double, Vourekas, a port authority captain, believes. “If we have underwater parks, and if the ministry of culture opens the antiquity-laden seas, then we believe we’re going to have between one and three thousand diving centres in Greece,” he said. Currently there are about a hundred.

The opening of underwater parks, ie, increasing the areas where people can dive, would comprise natural and perhaps manmade exhibits as well as shipwrecks less than a century old – there are an astounding 408 of them, says Vourekas.

The opening, however, of more areas will prove tricky, as Greece has to strike a difficult balance between preserving its vast archaeological legacy and meeting the demands of modern tourism.

At the moment, an estimated four million European scuba-diving enthusiasts, representing ten days’ travel per year, bypass the warm, inviting waters of Greece for less restricted shores elsewhere. While it may be enough for holiday-makers wanting to add some dives to their vacation, the 140 kilometers of coastline currently open is not enough for either the local municipalities keen to develop underwater parks, or the tour operators, hotels, diving schools and enthusiasts that might otherwise come here.

An ‘ancient’ obstacle
The problem is that there are so many antiquities – more than 1,000 ancient shipwrecks were recently mapped in Greek seas alone – that the ministry of culture’s underwater archaeological department is reluctant to open the seas.

“It can be every day that we receive information about newly-discovered antiquities in the sea,” said Dimitris Kourkoumelis, an archaeologist at the ministry of culture’s Department of Underwater Antiquities. Some are indeed caught in fishermen’s nets and are duly delivered to authorities, thus securing a Good Samaritan’s reward for the finders. Still, much of Poseidon’s bounty finds its way illegally to collections outside the country. “That’s why, diving near antiquities, has been prohibited for so many years,” Vourekas said.

Kourkoumelis said it was in the culture ministry’s plan to create more underwater diving areas, but that they would proceed with caution. Vourekas suggested that perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 of the most important areas could remain off-limits without anyone minding, while the rest could be opened, the idea being that removing the prohibition might deflate the impulse to steal and attract tourism income at the same time.

Further, some antiquities are not so interesting to divers because “they’re so old, they’ve become one with the environment,” said Ilse Stroud, owner of the Aegean Dive Center in Athens. “They wouldn’t even recognize it as an artifact… But if a site was made like an underwater museum… then it would be very, very interesting.”

The government clearly has a difficult choice to make when the parliament vote comes up. But whether hearts or minds tip the scale, the decision will be anxiously awaited by many interested parties.