Med Recreational Diving At The Illas Medes Marine Protected Area

Over 1,345 different marine species have been listed there since Jacques Cousteau went scuba diving there and the Medes Islands ecosystem is justly classified as the best natural reserve in the western Mediterranean.

Custodianship of Illas Medes started in 1983, and in 1990 the preservation was expanded to the seabed flora and fauna, encouraging a remarkable recovery of the natural marine life and making the area into a refuge for numerous species faced with extinction. The areas supporting marine seagrasses like Posidonia oceanica are exceptionally productive as they are the breeding habitats for many crucial species.

The Medes Islands Protected Zone covers an area of 93,2 hectares with an added protected 418 hectare area stretching up to the Montgri coast. A new Natural Park has been proclaimed by the Government of Catalunya to include the coast northward all the way to Cala Montgo, L'Escala.

Caverns at Medes Islands Marine Reserve
The plentiful tunnels and caves evidence that this limestone archipelago was attached to the Montgri Massif over ten thousand years ago. Today caves around the Medes Islands and up the Montgrí coast towards L'Escala provide exceptional opportunities for divers to experience (with a dive leader) the separate fauna that like to live in semi-darkness.

One of the most talked-of sites at Illas Medes is Dolphin Cave, given this name a statue at the southern entrance. Within is a resting place for large groupers, meagres and shoals of silvery bream. Along the reef outside divers glide through shoals of bream and clouds of anthias at the same time scanning out into the blue for cruising eagle rays and visiting sunfish and dolphins.

There's another cave system on one side with its groupers, always ready to pose for photographs, illuminated by a towering funnel. Yellow cup corals deck the walls and camouflaged scorpionfish perch unseen on ledges. Mediterranean moray eels and congers live in cracks in the rocks. From here a further tunnel leads back through the island and out onto the reef again, passing by the most beautiful yellow and red gorgonian corals.

Scuba Diving at Medes Islands Marine Reserve
There are 10 buoyed dive sites, offering the opportunity for diving during the whole year. A variety of depths allows immersions for every level of diver, and even snorkelers can enjoy the colourful spectacle of subaqua marine life of the Medes Islands. In the shallow zones we can explore a dense canopy of brightly lit seaweeds with over a hundred species hosting shoals of silvery bream, colourful wrasse, and elegant nudibranchs. Beneath 10-15 meters we notice light-deprived algae and pretty pink sea perch, large predatory dentex, eagle rays, octopus, lobster and big, friendly groupers. Below 20 meters we enter an area of gorgonian corals inhabited by more than 600 species.

The Illas Medes Protected Area, with its 65,000 annual dives, is an example of good stewardship. During 2009 scuba divers helped with an assessment of the the Medes Islands ecosystems by filling out questionnaires following their dives. Questions asked about the abundance of different species counted and the number of divers, snorkelers and boats observed at the dives sites.

The findings of the ongoing analysis of the Medes Islands Reserve will demonstrate the level of protection required to safeguard this small archipelago for future generations. An area of exceptional ecological importance, all the underwater environments to be found in the Mediterranean are represented in the sea floor around the Medes Islands, making the area one of the most captivating sites for Mediterranean scuba diving.

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