Isla de Messina

The west wall of Illa Messina drops from the surface rim into the canyon on the island's south side, a channel between two rock formations that gives the dive its shape. Past the channel the rock gives way to sand at the canyon's base, and the route continues onto the east flank, where the island stops sheltering the water and the current starts to matter. Barracuda schools and hunting amberjack work this open-water stretch, and tuna pass through on occasion, alongside the resident grouper among the boulders. On a different day the same island offers Messina W instead, a shallower route on the west side over a Posidonia meadow, where salema and white seabream graze the grass. Operators run the island as one trip and choose between the two routes on the day, so which dive you actually get depends on conditions and the group as much as on the booking.

The Cap de Creus Natural Park surveys Illa Messina as two separate named dive points, Messina S and Messina W, each with its own government-mapped depth and species panel,12 yet no operator sells them apart. The island is one trip with two profiles inside it, and the choice of which one you get is made by the boat, not by the brochure. What carries the reputation is the canyon itself, a real rock passage divers swim straight through, walled in red gorgonian on the way down and opening onto blue water on the way out. Local divers who return to Cap de Creus season after season name Illa Messina among the area's most beautiful dives. Barracuda schools and amberjack keep that reputation current on the open-water side, where the same shift in current that makes the dive interesting is also what a skipper reads before deciding whether to run it that morning.

Current is the variable to plan around here. It can be light or demanding, and local divers warn it can reverse direction partway through the dive, so carry an SMB and stay close to the wall on entry and to the guide through the canyon. Expect a sharp thermocline near 15 metres in summer, with surface water at 21-25C dropping to 14-18C below it on the Messina S canyon route; the shallower Messina W meadow mostly stays above that line, so plan your exposure suit around whichever route the boat runs that day. Tramontana wind shuts the site for days at a stretch outside high summer, so build slack into the trip if Illa Messina is the dive you came for.