Furió Fitó

Most teams drop onto the plateau by descending the mooring line. The shotline lands you on rock at 12-14 m where the plateau spreads broad and almost flat, and from here the plan branches. The signature route runs north along the plateau to the wall: the bottom drops away in a near-vertical face, a small crack near the lip leads to a collapse at 45 m for teams with the gas and depth plan for it, and the wall itself is the gorgonian face — red Paramuricea clavata fans dominate the vertical, with yellow Eunicella cavolini mixed in. This is also the route current most affects.

The alternative is the southwest face: a more progressive descent rather than a wall, with abundant benthic life on the slope and access to a smaller adjacent pinnacle east of the main massif, the better bet for finding conger and moray eels in cracks. Gas reserves usually decide whether the team includes the smaller pinnacle on the same dive or saves it for a second tank. An arch near the mooring offers a swim-through with no fixed route.

Ascent is back to the mooring line. The open-sea position and possible current make a free ascent inadvisable. Schools of barracuda often appear in the open water during the safety stop above the plateau in summer.

Costa Brava has plenty of gorgonian-wall dives, and Furió Fitó's distinctiveness is that one boat-mooring delivers all three of the area's signature dive shapes — plateau, vertical wall, and smaller pinnacle — concentrated on a single rock. Ullastres divides those experiences across three separate pinnacles; Llosa de Palamós is a comparatively shallow shelf. Here the rock is the geographic anchor, and the route is the choice the guide makes when you reach the bottom.

The second distinctive aspect is the open-sea atmosphere. Half a mile off Cap de Begur, the site is exposed enough that conditions vary dramatically day to day — a flat morning gives 20 m of visibility and warm-water sunlight on the plateau; an afternoon Tramuntana shuts the dive down before the boats leave port. Costa Brava sites closer in are more forgiving. This one isn't, and that is part of why local centres treat it as a trophy dive.

Current is the variable that shapes the day, not the depth. It can pin a team off the north face and cut bottom time short. The standard counter is a careful surface check on the buoy, an SMB on the safety stop, and willingness to accept an early turnaround. The boat ride is the longest of any Palamós-area dive at roughly 35 minutes from the nearest port, with Aiguablava offering the shortest crossing.

Below the summer thermocline at 15-20 m, bottom temperatures drop into the 14-19 °C range even in July and August. The deeper wall profile feels considerably colder than the plateau; a 7 mm wetsuit or hood is worth carrying for sustained time below 25 m. EAN32 substantially extends safe bottom time in the 30-40 m range on the wall and is strongly recommended. Centres from Palamós, Llafranc, Tamariu and Aiguablava all run trips here, so booking flexibility comes down to which port suits the day's wind.