La Bramassa

The dive

La Bramassa is on the eastern flank of the Gulf of Porto Conte, where the limestone coast is still low enough that the first submerged openings appear near the surface. Alghero Divers call it a complesso rather than a cave: about a hundred metres of small grottoes, passages, canyons and exits through windows in the rock, all of it shallow. Adventure & Diving of Alghero give the maximum depth as 8 m. The name comes from the cove alongside it, Cala della Bramassa, and the marine park's own dive table uses that form, listing site 2 of zone B as La Caletta della Bramassa at 40 deg 34.512 N, 8 deg 11.867 E, which is about 25 m from this pin. 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.

The first cave is not a cave in the erosional sense but an ancient collapse: enormous limestone blocks that fell and cemented back into one mass, leaving a roofed platform with siphons opening to the surface, where small groups of mullet hold. Under that platform is a wide chamber with several rooms, some reaching the surface through further siphons, and the fallen blocks still visible in it. A lateral tunnel near the entrance leads to the adjacent small grottoes, which have openings above and to the side so sunbeams cut through them; this is the part everybody photographs. On the floor of the central chamber, further passages narrow enough that you scrape along the bottom, run back into fully dark rooms, and end at a chimney that rises to a blue window at 1 m.

Because it sits inside the bay, it works when the outside does not. Adventure & Diving state plainly that the Bramassa and Pozzo caves let you dive in a cave even when a rough sea makes it impossible to get round the headlands, which is the practical reason this site is on every Alghero programme. Alghero Divers rate it a fun dive, not demanding and not deep, and specifically as the right step for a diver who wants something more than open water; they say it is at its best in late morning or the afternoon, when the light is coming through the windows.

The life is a shallow-cave assemblage. European spiny lobster are permanently inside, with slipper lobsters in the crevices; red scorpionfish are numerous, brown meagre are both inside and schooling outside, and sea bream and saddled bream hang in the shade under the windows with large schools of salema over everything. Octopus are conspicuous between June and August and amberjack turn up at the end of the summer. Sponge crabs are recorded here too.

• About 100 m of shallow collapse caves, canyons and window exits, none deeper than 8 m
• Sunbeams through the side and roof openings of the small adjacent grottoes
• A chimney rising from the dark inner rooms to a blue window at 1 m
• Spiny lobster permanently resident inside, slipper lobsters in the crevices
• Divable when swell shuts down the exposed headlands

Conditions

Shallow, clear and sheltered water on the inner eastern flank of Porto Conte, with the dive tied to a park mooring and confined to a 50 m radius. Best worked in late morning or the afternoon when sunlight is coming through the windows and side openings.

On current: Sheltered. The site is inside the Gulf of Porto Conte on its eastern flank, and Adventure & Diving's whole argument for it is that Bramassa and Pozzo remain divable when the sea outside will not let a boat round the points. No source reports current at the site. What limits you here is not water movement but the overhead: the surface-level passages are open to anybody, the inner rooms are not.