Cala della Bramassa

The dive

Cala Bramassa is a small pebble-and-sand cove on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Porto Conte, inside the Punta Giglio block of the Parco di Porto Conte. The pin is on the beach itself. That matters here, because the name covers a stretch of coast rather than one dive: the marine park's own 2025 dive table lists a zone-B site called La Caletta della Bramassa at 40 deg 34.512 N, 8 deg 11.867 E, which is about 900 m southwest along the same shore, and puts the Grotta del Pozzo and Grotta Peppa in the same Bramassa sector at that end. So a booking made under the name Bramassa may well be the cave ground down the coast, not this cove. Note that two authorities put similar names about 900 m apart on this stretch: the marine park's dive table lists La Caletta della Bramassa at 40 deg 34.512 N, 8 deg 11.867 E, while OpenStreetMap names a bay Cala Bramassa at 40.5822, 8.2039. Both pins exist in this catalogue as separate sites. Navigate on the coordinates your operator gives you, not on the name.

What the cove is, in the words of Poseidon Diving Center of Alghero, who registered it: a flat bottom convenient for exercises, suitable for running the open-water sessions of beginner courses (Try Scuba and Basic Diver), reaching 18 m if you swim offshore. They also list it as a snorkelling spot on the grounds that it is sheltered from wind and the sea is almost always flat. From the beach the bottom is mixed rock and stones rather than clean sand, which is what gives the shallows something to look at.

Access is on foot and there is nothing at the cove. From Alghero take the Porto Conte road, turn for the Maristella district and then for the Punta Giglio park entrance opposite the Base Nautica; park there and follow the signed path, roughly 500 m through pine and macchia, down to the beach. No bar, no water, no lifeguard, so everything including tanks has to be carried in. The nearest food is the Rifugio di Mare restaurant, about twenty minutes on foot.

The animals a snorkeller here is reported to see are octopus, seabream and damselfish. The OBIS occurrence set around this pin adds the rest of a Sardinian rocky-shore list: white, two-banded and sharpsnout seabream, rainbow and brown wrasse, painted comber, cardinalfish, salema, conger, black-faced blenny, purple sea urchin and the red starfish Echinaster sepositus. Read the sponge-and-nudibranch half of that list with care: the 1.5 km search radius reaches the shaded cave ground at Punta Giglio, so animals like Petrosia ficiformis, Peltodoris atromaculata and the shrimp Stenopus spinosus belong to the overhangs down the coast rather than to this shallow cove.

• Flat, shallow bottom the Alghero centres use for Try Scuba and Basic Diver open-water sessions
• 18 m on the bottom if you swim offshore from the beach
• Mixed rock and stone shallows that hold octopus, seabream and damselfish
• A 500 m path through pine woods from the Punta Giglio park entrance, and nothing at all on the beach

Conditions

A sheltered cove on the inner side of the Gulf of Porto Conte, described by the centre that runs courses here as almost always flat. The bottom is shallow and level close in and drops to about 18 m if you swim out. No source publishes a visibility figure or a water temperature for this cove.

On current: No source gives a current for this cove. Poseidon Diving Center, who use it for course work, describe it as sheltered from the wind with the sea almost always flat, which is the reason they take beginners there; that is a statement about surface state, not about current, and it is the only one available.