Istria Coast

Croatia

Croatia's most wreck-dense diving coast, shaped by WWI and WWII minefields off Pula and Rovinj, headlined by the protected wreck of the passenger steamer Baron Gautsch.

Istria's official tourism board lists 23 notable shipwreck sites and 40 submarine reefs, a legacy of WWI/WWII mining. The best-known wreck is the Baron Gautsch, an Austro-Hungarian passenger steamer that struck a mine and sank on 13 August 1914 off the Brijuni Islands; it now lies at 28-40 m and, as a protected war grave, may only be dived with special permits. Other cited wrecks include the Coriolanus, Lina, Giuseppe Dezza and Hans Schmidt. Coordinates are the Wikipedia infobox centroid for Istria County, since no single coordinate exists for 'the coast' as a whole. Source: istra.hr, Wikipedia (Istria County), rovinj-sub.hr.