Descending the east side of Bajo de Dentro, the thermocline at 10 metres bites with a vengeance, from 22 Celsius to 18 Celsius over just a few metres. Whilst the shallow warm water is beautifully clear, some frisky marine organism below the thermocline is working hard to fill the deeper water with long globs of stringy snot plankton. The sort of thing that only lasts a few days, but just happens to coincide with my trip.
It is late in the afternoon and for some inexplicable reason I have a gut feeling that this will be a really worthwhile dive. Reaching 25 metres, dive guide Alfredo turns south along the wall. I cut the corner and skirt ahead for good camera angles, in and out of a small cave then deeper round the south end of the reef.
Visibility is still quite good in spite of the plankton, yet the overall effect is like swimming through cobwebs. Even the forest of red gorgonians at just short of 40 metres looks more like a movie set over-decorated for a haunted house scene.
I haven't done a great deal of diving in the Mediterranean and it shows with my lack of familiarity with the fish species. Some of the fish I can recognise, but others leave me wondering. Clouds of orange antheas and grey damsel fish are easy enough and I can reckognise grouper, bream, saupe and most of the wrasse, yet a large grey fish with a yellow splotch is new to me.
As so often happens with late afternoon dives, it all comes together and just clicks. The amount of sunlight and angle of the lighting, the waves, the current, the behaviour of the fish, and possibly something to do with me. Maybe it is because I am beginning to settle down and chill out a bit by this time of day.
Sometimes dive trips are an instant success, while other times it takes a few dives before I really begin to enjoy things. On this trip I had already dived at the other end of Bajo de Dentro and at the "Segundo Caibezo" of Bajo de Piles, which I presume means the second pinnacle of the reef.
Both were quite nice dives, but somehow I didn't begin to get excited until towards the end of the dive on Bajo de Piles when I finally managed to get a shoal of barracuda to co-operate. I had stalked the shoal 3 times, each time failing to get close enough and subsequently departing for 5 minutes to give them a chance to settle back to their usual position above a saddle in the reef.
Each time the encounter had been close enough for any non-photographer to see barracuda and get excited about it, but not close enough for photographs. On the same dive I had similar distant encounters with some fair sized grouper and a selection of eagle rays. Great for the average diver, yet disappointing for a photographer. Then finally the barracuda seemed to accept me and my camera sprang into action.
My story is actually a bit more complicated than this. I had originally travelled to Murcia for a long weekend in April, but diving had been curtailed by heavy seas. On the bright side the stormy weather had enabled me to enjoy the red wine in larger quantities than if I had been diving, visit an art exhibition at the cathedral in the city of Murcia, see a Holland submarine preserved on the seafront at Cartagena and go sailing on Mar Menor. Underwater I had seen enough to convince me it was worth coming back at the end of the summer for the better diving conditions I am now enjoying.
The whole reef system of the Islas Hormigas extends several kilometres out to sea from the point at Cabo de Palos, a tight right angle corner in the Mediterranean coastline of Spain in the province of Murcia, to the south of Alicante and to the east of Almeria. The reefs and islands are now a protected marine reserve, with the actual Isla Hormigas and the outermost reef, the Bajo de Fuera, being complete no-go areas.
The other significant marine feature of the area is Mar Menor, an enormous salt water lagoon just to the north of Cabo de Palos. Mar Menor is separated from the sea by La Manga, a wide sandy beach about 25 kilometres long, the southern two thirds of which is a long strip of hotels, villas and marinas, and the northern third a nature reserve with old salt pans and flocks of pink flamingos. Mar Menor is only a few metres deep and no one dives in it, though it does provide warm sheltered water for other water sports.
Currents sweeping round Cabo de Palos and across the reefs provide all the right environmental conditions for prolific fish life, while the thermal reservoir of Mar Menor gives the region its own local micro-climate.
With shallow reefs running well out to sea, it is little surprise that there have been many shipwrecks, particularly on the outermost Bajo de Fuera which is currently in the no-go part of the marine reserve. The most famous of the local wrecks is the Italian passenger liner Sirio (Sirius in English), which struck Bajo de Fuera in 1906 with tremendous loss of life and much scandal.
Next morning I dive the wreck of the Isla Gomera, less than two kilometres straight out from the Club de Buceo Islas Hormigas in the port of Cabo de Palos. The wreck is outside the marine reserve and hence accessible to all divers suitably experienced.
As we arrive there is a lone spear fisherman in his boat above the wreck. We have to wait a few minutes while he free dives to try and shoot his lunch. It isn't long before he gives up and leaves the area safe for divers.
I can't see the wreck from the surface, but the outline is just about distinguishable through the plankton as I break the thermocline and get beneath the shoal of fish that have already gathered in the shade of our boat. The buoy line is attached to the bow, the shallowest part of the wreck at just past 30 metres.
The Isla Gomera foundered in 1946 when its cargo of oranges shifted in a storm and is referred to locally as "Naranjito" after the Spanish "naranja" for orange. With nothing worth the attention of commercial salvage and deep enough not to obstruct shipping, the wreck is beautifully intact and upright.
I swim rapidly for the stern, the deepest part of the wreck at 42 metres. I spend some time beneath the propeller and rudder, then work my way back through the engine room at the stern, intact triple expansion engine and a single boiler. There is a single aft hold, a central wheelhouse and then a single forward hold before the raised focsle.
For another wreck dive I join Ribera Diving located at Santiago de la Ribera, a resort town at the opposite end and inside Mar Menor.
As the large RIB screams across Mar Menor I can see the seabed blurred below me through water only a few metres deep. We slow down to make our way through the channel that crosses La Manga, then back to full throttle as we head out to sea past the easy dive sites at Isla Grosa and Farallon. At this end of Mar Menor there are apparently no good intermediate dives, just shallow sites round the islands and deeper offshore wrecks.
It is another 15 minutes to El Carbonero, which translates to "the collier" or "the coal miner", another wreck more likely named after its cargo than the original name of the ship.
Here the visibility is stunning, I can see the outline of the wreck 40 metres below while floating on the surface. It shows what the visibility could be like at other sites if it were not for the late season plankton bloom.
The anchor has caught against a winch located just forward of the base of the funnel at 38 metres. Just aft I drop into the engine room through one of the open ventilator hatches and make my way to the stern past the top of a nicely preserved triple expansion steam engine.
The aft pair of holds are well broken, but enough is left to hold the wreck together with a propeller shaft tunnel running along the keel. Beneath the stern at 44 metres, the propeller has only one blade left, pointing straight up. An old fishing net is draped down from the stern above, now bunched up and with enough marine life growing on it to actually be part of the scenery. Above there is an empty gun platform, but no gun.
The ship is thought to have been torpedoed by a U-boat in the Great War. Merchant ships would hug the sanctuary of the neutral Spanish coastline and U-boats would catch them as they came further offshore to skirt Bajo de Fuera.
Apparently some divers were caught lifting ammunition from the gun and the authorities have threatened to ban diving on this wreck.
The forward holds are more intact, though all but a few lumps of coal have been salvaged. I just about have time to make it to the skeleton of the focsle and see that both anchors are gone before my 20 minutes are up and it is time to decompress. Ascending through the thermocline to make my stops in the warmer surface water is a blessing, watching other divers' bright yellow cylinders bubbling along the wreck below.