Cabo de Palos & Islas Hormigas

Everything is done by boat from the village harbour, and the reserve's rules shape the day: authorised centres, guided groups, mooring buoys on the summits rather than anchors, and a briefing that is as much about depth discipline as about the route. Descents run down a line, and the usual pattern is to take the deep flank first, then work back up the rock and finish in the shallows on top, where the fish are thickest and the safety stop sorts itself out.

Two seamounts do most of the work. Bajo de Dentro is the more manageable, a summit at around 12 m with walls falling to 40 m and barracuda and dentex stacked above it. Bajo de Fuera is the outer, more exposed mountain, rising from roughly 50 m to within a few metres of the surface, and it is where the reserve's reputation was made. Three wrecks lie on the flanks, the Sirio, the Naranjito and the Stanfield, and they are dives in their own right rather than detours from the rock.

The signature experience here is stationary. Dusky groupers that have not been hunted since 1995 sit out in the open and let divers approach, so a fish that is wary almost everywhere else in the western Mediterranean behaves as though it knows where the reserve boundary runs. Around them, barracuda hold in permanent schools over the summits and tuna cut past in open water, usually at the edge of visibility rather than close in.

This is not a beginner's destination. Current runs moderate and shifts with the wind and swell on exposed rock, the wrecks and the best fish action sit past 35 m, and easterlies cancel boats at any time of year. It suits experienced divers comfortable with deep, current-swept seamounts, and nitrox earns its keep across a two-dive day. Winter gives the clearest water but the coldest, while June to October brings the calmest crossings.