Cova del Quim

Cova del Quim opens at very shallow depth, with the cavern entrance set into a Costa del Montgrí coastline that has been used as a beginner training ground for as long as L'Estartit centres have run boat days. Inside the overhead, vertical walls carry coralligène — the dense Mediterranean community of encrusting algae, sponges, and small invertebrates that builds up on shaded rock. The route stays within the daylight zone; this is a cavern segment, not a true cave. Outside the entrance, the bottom transitions through sand pockets and into a posidonia meadow. The named cavern feature sits in the shallow zone, with the eco-brief describing a longer profile that can extend down to 20 m along the open reef beyond it.

The site does something most coastal cavern dives don't: it puts three Mediterranean habitats — coralligène-covered overhead, sand bottom, posidonia meadow — into a single ten-metre dive. The overhead is short and forgiving, which makes it usable for a try-dive or an Open Water practical session. That matters because training is not permitted inside the Medes marine reserve, and the Costa del Montgrí coastline is where L'Estartit centres run their teaching dives. Cova del Quim is one of those teaching-friendly sites. It isn't a destination dive for visiting certified divers; it's a warm-up, a refresher, or a first-cavern site.

Bring a torch — the cavern interior loses ambient light even in daylight conditions, and the coralligène detail is what the dive is about. The posidonia meadow needs careful buoyancy: trim and hover, don't settle, don't anchor. The site carries two names in circulation, Cova del Quim and Còrrec Llarg, and at least one park authority uses the latter; if a centre's site list shows only one of the two, it's worth confirming you're booking the same dive. Boat access is from L'Escala or L'Estartit; centres handle the logistics. Reserve permits do not apply here, but the standard park-wide eco-rules do.