Malgrats punta

Boats take divers to the seaward face at the tip of the largest of the Illes Malgrats, off Santa Ponsa. The island's cliffs fall from above the waterline and carry on underwater as a vertical wall to about 25 m, where a pile of big boulders sits at its foot, sheltering fish and invertebrates. Barracuda are common around them, and big schools are a regular sight.

Beyond the boulders the seabed runs on from 25 m to a 36 m maximum, where lobsters are common. The dive finishes shallow, swimming between the cracks that split the platform on the island's northern tip. In spring and summer slipper lobsters are said to be easy to spot in those shallow crevices.

The boulders at the foot of the wall are covered in bryozoan colonies, and the walls above are reported covered in coral, sponges and small organisms, with banks of fish out in the blue.

The Punta sits in the most exposed part of the islands, the open-sea end of the Malgrats. The guide's reading of the water on the day sets the route and the exit.

The Punta is reached by boat only, on a trip booked through a dive centre. The reserve authorisation is personal and paid, and the annual version does not cover the Malgrats zone. Dives here run at set buoyed points in small groups, and night diving is not allowed.