MAD Divers - Christmas in Mallorca, Diving Almagro and El Toro

MAD Divers News from December 2004

MAD Divers Christmas dive trip
In preparation for closing down for Christmas and New Year (it's our only holiday of the year!!!) we got what remains of our MAD Divers crew on the island and had a trip to a couple of our favourite dive sites - the Phoenician wreck of Almagro and the nature reserve at El Toro.

The day was perfect, the sea like a mill-pond and though it started out a little cloudy by the time we reached our first dive site the sun was shining too.
Almagro is the wreck of a Phoenician trading ship. It sank ca. 400BC while on its way to Mallorca with a cargo of semi-precious stones, including amber. It lies in about 34m on a bed of white Mediterranean sand. Because of the age the wooden wreckage has more or less fossilised now so that it looks like a giant stone rugby ball.

As you can see from the photos', the inside of the wreck is home to a number of eels, both morays and congers and during the summer months octopus are visitors to the area. Come the winter time the octopus have gone again and left the wreck to the eels and various fish.

What makes Almagro unique is the sea-bed surrounding the wreck. It's covered in the remnants of amphores used to hold the cargo. Some of the pottery is only a few inches across, other bits are several feet across. To be 34m under the sea and holding an amphore that may last have been touched by a human hand 400 years before Jesus was born is quite an amazing experience.

Because of the depth and the lack of a mutli-level option the bottom time on air is only about 15min. Because of that we all went down on nitrox, stayed an extra 10minutes and completed the dive as a no-decompression dive.
After a slow chug back to El Toro and an hour and a half on the surface eating pizza, soup and cold meats we found ourselves ready to dive the island of El Toro. This is a nature reserve and offers some of the best diving in the Med.

Starting at 5m, we dropped down, again with nitrox to about 25m.
The highlight of this dive was the enormous school of barracuda present. My guess would be a couple of thousand. They allowed us to swim in-amongst them and seemed entirely at ease with our presence. We also found ourselves a lobster down near the bottom.
At the end of the dive there is a small cave around 5m. Inside there are normally lots of scorpion fish and also shrimp.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you come to Mallorca for a weeks diving make sure you do El Toro at least once. It's the jewel in the crown!

To contact us you can follow this link to our 'Contacts' page.

The day was perfect, the sea like a mill-pond and though it started out a little cloudy by the time we reached our first dive site the sun was shining too. Almagro is the wreck of a Phoenician trading ship. It sank ca. 400BC while on its way to Mallorca with a cargo of semi-precious stones, including amber. It lies in about 34m on a bed of white Mediterranean sand. Because of the age the wooden wreckage has more or less fossilised now so that it looks like a giant stone rugby ball.
	As you can see from the photos', the inside of the wreck is home to a number of eels, both morays and congers and during the summer months octopus are visitors to the area. Come the winter time the octopus have gone again and left the wreck to the eels and various fish.
What makes Almagro unique is the sea-bed surrounding the wreck. It's covered in the remnants of amphores used to hold the cargo. Some of the pottery is only a few inches across, other bits are several feet across. To be 34m under the sea and holding an amphore that may last have been touched by a human hand 400 years before Jesus was born is quite an amazing experience.