DIVING & WATERSPORTS

The "Abyss" - Esparta island   6 The best of four great dives at Esparta, it sounds daunting but in fact it is just an exhilerating drop off from 5m down to 23m before carrying on in shelves down to 45m+. The 'good stuff' is to be found between 25m to 30m; a family of grouper that range from medium size "kids" up to four enormous adult monsters, "Big Daddy" being the largest most impressive of them.  For some time now we have had brief sightings of a very big grouper along the wall and this has been confirmed in September with two close encounters with a huge single dusky grouper estimated at about 45-50 kilos with his den safely at 37 m. He was officially named "ELVIS" in October 2004.

."The Forest of Gorgonia"    11   - Bledas Plana Island A spectacular journey 'through' the forest of soft coral fans in an effortless gentle drift. Black in appearance, these delicate corals wave gently in the current, exploding into firey crimson under torchlight. A more advanced dive, between 35-40 m.

Our Dive Sites

NEW SITE

Islas Margaritas   17 Few good dive sites look good on the surface too, but Margaritas islands are an exception with their huge low impressive arch and high imposing cliffs. Underwater, it is like Swiss cheese - lots of interlinking holes with openings on the outside, like windows. Its an easy, but slightly deeper dive with the entry at 26m immediately rising up through the chain of caverns, brightly lit by their "windows" and exiting at 15m. If you cross across under the surface arch, checking out the cracks for morays and conger, you can finish your stops and explore a beautiful swim-through at 4m to a garden of sponges, coral and growth that is a riot of colour. Further down the west arm there is a huge underwater arch that penetrates the whole rock from 9m down to 26m in a large oval shape. Normally we follow this dive by a shallow second dive on the wreck of the "Nosahy K" (below) a 12m max dive on the remains of a twenty two year old tanker.

With more than 15 islands both in and around the Cala d'Hort Marine Nature Reserve, we're spoilt for choice when it comes to dive sites, but to give you an idea of what's on offer, here is a quick run down on just a few out of our 'top twenty.

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Passing the boiler room.... ..the steel prop,..                    ..and the prop shaft.

Above - Dusky Grouper from the "Haystack".

All photos property of Jeff Richardson, Sea Horse SAC, unless otherwise stated.

NEW SITES Straight into the top ten "Snakes and Ladders", just around the corner from Torre Rovira, is a spectacular trip through canyons and gulleys full of colourful sponges and corals. Morays and small grouper quickly hide as you slowly progress through the maze of cracks and crevices. NEW SITES At the extreme western end of  'Esparta' island there is shallow shelf with remnants of amphora from a wrecked Roman or Phenician galley and directly after that, a breath-taking drop-off that goes down to.... well, we don't know exactly, but at  a guess, about 85+metres and amazing viz too! This new dive has been dauntingly  named "The Point of No Return".

NEW SITES "Hannibals Cauldron" gives us a new  'fishy' alternative to the "Haystack" on the backside of Conejera island and protected from north easterlies. Large shoals of many types of smaller fish plus big morays.

NEW SITE

"The EC-DRC" Could have been our best Wreck! A small light aircraft ditched into the sea off Cala Tarida on 5 September and was lying in 18 metres of water on a sandy bottom.  Plans to lift it and move it to an interesting dive location were ruined by a Glass bottom boat towing it away first and dropping it in 8m depth. The first winter storms and bad weather reduced it to a pile of scrap. We were lucky to get a couple of dives in on it before it was moved.

"Es Payaret" - The Haystack   2 Everyones favorite dive here, this tiny little cone shaped rock about 500 metres north of Torre Rovira is one of the most famous around Ibiza. An easy dive that you can't get lost on, it's a real 'fish fiesta' with myriads of Damsel fish, Sergeant Majors, Moray eels, three different species of grouper but most spectacular, huge shoals of barracuda all watching you suspiciously . No great distances or depths make this a great dive for any level of diver. Look out for the "GHOST",  a new huge grouper at 30 m on the NW corner.