You don’t need to snorkel far offthe coast before you find large schools of fish and hear the sounds of snapping shrimp as the wavesbreak on the distant sandy beaches. If you stay in one spot for long enough it’s likely you will notice that you are actually surrounded by a huge amount of marine diversity as more fish come out of their hiding places along with a multitude of different crab species, sponges, starfish and brittle stars, sea cucumbers, clams and jellyfish. But this is no ordinary snorkelling tour on the tropical Great Barrier Reef or in the coral triangle; you are off the coast of Italy, England, or maybe even Iceland, and you are snorkelling across a bed of coralline algae.