El Jardín y La Red

Fifteen minutes north of Sant Feliu the boat drops you onto a working-reef day-dive with shape. The first ten metres roll away from the shore as classic Costa Brava reef. At 18 metres a sand corridor only two metres across opens between the rocks, and that corridor is the dive's spine. At its end sits the Cabeza del Camello, a rock so completely covered in yellow encrusting anemone that on first sight it reads more as colour than as topography. Past the rock the seabed drops vertically to thirty-two metres. The embedded fishing net waits at the foot of the wall, now an algae-and-sponge-covered ribbon of reef rather than mesh. A May 2025 forum log puts a real number on the bottom: forty metres, the floor where spiny lobsters concentrate because the species prefers the colder end of the profile. The route reverses on the way home. Divers track back through Cabeza del Camello at the right depth for a long, easy ascent, then finish in El Jardín for the safety stop, where nudibranchs sit in the cracks and the occasional moray surfaces from a hole.

Three things give the dive its identity. The two-zone profile lets a mixed-experience buddy team fit on one boat: beginners stop at the Cabeza del Camello shoulder, AOW divers extend down to the wall and the net. The yellow-anemone rock between the zones gives the dive a single recognisable subject and a natural rendezvous point at the depth most teams want for their first ascent stage. The net itself adds a small narrative — working-fishery debris that has been overgrown into reef — that most reefs in the area cannot offer. None of these are unique on a global scale; yellow Parazoanthus pinnacles and ghost-net colonisation exist across the Mediterranean. They coincide here, on one fifteen-minute boat ride, in a route that finishes with a shallow garden.

The Cabeza del Camello carries the dive visually. Shoot it as a mid-water subject at 18-24 metres with a wide-angle lens; the entire surface is yellow Parazoanthus axinellae, and the rock's mass against blue water is the frame the centres show in their site photos. In El Jardín, drop to macro for nudibranchs — Hypselodoris tricolor has been documented in the cracks of the shallow rock garden, and a torch helps in the deeper crevices around the net at the wall foot.

Plan exposure for the deepest target depth, not the surface reading. At 30 metres or below the summer bottom stays in the mid-teens even when surface tops 25°C; a 5mm full suit is the minimum for the deeper segment. The headland off Punta de Garbí can build a north-running surface current during the dive, so carry a compass and SMB and check the swim back to the boat before surfacing. Three centres run the dive year-round from Sant Feliu marina: SubLimits, Piscis Diving and Varadero Dive. Boat outings start around 45 euros. Anchoring on posidonia is prohibited under Catalan law, so all centres moor offshore or use buoys.