Aguilhas, Spain
by Toby Mottram

A few weeks ago I dived a 30 m reef off the coast of Spain with some friends from work. It sounds bland but this is how it happened. My job is designing experiments to try out new animal husbandry equipment and this allows me a lot of flexibility where and with whom I work. Last year the Foot and Mouth Disease forced me to look elsewhere than the fens for a place to test a new piece of pig farming equipment. By luck one of the team knew someone in Spain and so all last winter I had to keep jetting down to Alicante to conduct tests at the University of Murcia. The University Vet School there did an excellent experiment and it turned out that a couple of the team were from the town of Aguilhas (pronounced eyeglass) on the coast about 40 miles south of Cartagena and go scuba diving. They don’t dive except in high summer but they kept telling me to fix a project meeting for a Friday in July and we’d go diving on the Saturday and Sunday.

So one Thursday in July I arrived at Murcia airport and as usual Juan met me. Usually I hire a car and head for a hotel but this time he took me straight to his house in an out of town complex high above the city. As I sat on his terrace facing south watching the sun set and hearing the dogs bark I felt that I was deep in an adventure and that my life was no longer in my control With some friends we barbecued sardinios and pork and ate salad. I helped as best I could and sat bemused as the Spanish conversation ebbed and flowed around me. The children were splashing around in the pool until gone midnight.

The next morning Juan picked me up and we made a slow progress via back roads towards Aguilhas. We followed one of the ancient Spanish drove roads used to move sheep South during winter and North before the summer drought. In the middle of a flat dusty plain we stopped at a wayside shack where we drank beer and ate sausage made out the back. The front room of the shack was set out as a bar and was littered with chunks of bread and sausage rind. Bottles of oil, wine, sausage hung from the rafters. Mostly old, portly men burnt almost black by working in the sun stood at the bar supping wine or beer and chewing sausage. It seemed far away from corporate catering that we would have found on the motorway.

We drove down to the coast at Mazarron where there were once iron mines and is now a burgeoning tourist resort. The coast from Mazarron southwards to Aguilhas is almost completely undeveloped, Puntas de Calnegre where we later had a beer is the sole settlement. It contains ten houses and a shop and a deserted beach with blue sea and surf. Further along there are beaches with no houses or bars or even footprints. There is a plan to build a motorway along this coast and it seems inevitable that this peaceful place will soon echo to the sound of mass tourism.

We arrived in mid afternoon at Aguilhas. The town grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century as a result of the iron ore mines. British engineers built a jetty and railway system and as a result of the contacts Aguilhas boasts one of the oldest football clubs in the Spanish league. The sea front runs for nearly three miles but there are hardly any hotels as the resort is known only to the Spanish, who either own or rent apartments or stay with relatives. Juan and Pepe came to pick me at the Hotel Carlos III (where I paid £25 for bed & breakfast) and we tooled around town to pick up a battery for the boat. It turned out they had only just bought the speed boat secondhand and it hadn’t been out yet that season. As the engineer in the party it fell to me to lie upside down under the transom of the boat extracting the old battery. It was hot. The only tool available was a rusty pair of cheap pliers, the kind that comes free with a Japanese motorbike.

I enjoyed doing it, as for the first time I felt I was being useful. The transom overhang was such that the battery would only come out on its side. This led to acid spilling out, I managed to protect my shirt but my trousers have an acid burn as a souvenir. Afterwards we went to an old slipway under a cliff only a few metres from the main beach and swam in the limpid water of early evening. Pepe lent me a mask and snorkel and I enjoyed a few minutes snorkelling looking at the fish and weeds. One of Juan’s neighbours came down, finned out with some plastic bags tucked in the waist band of his shorts. I wondered what he was up to but a few minutes later he was standing on the slip squeezing the water out of a full bag from which the waving tentacles of an octopus protruded. Fresh pulpo for his tea that night.

Later we went to a restaurant with a terrace view of the fish dock and harbour and ate the local delicacies. I was relieved that after a day with several small meals it turned out not to be a huge meal. The Spanish way of eating is to have a succession of small starter type dishes such as a pepper salad, calamar, and a variety of fish dishes. At this meal each dish became progressively more exotic and tasty culminating in a main course of a fish described as San Pietro which I think was grey mullet. A whole specimen was brought so that I could identify it. The particular part with the jaw muscle was given to me as a delicacy. The fish eats prawns and so the jaw muscle is well developed.

The next morning Juan met me and took me to the sea front where we met Miguel who they introduced as an experienced diver. We then went to a crowded street where a queue of people waited at a hot food stall built into the wall of what appeared to be a market building. Juan sent me to grab a table at a café close by. I ordered coffee and orange juice. Juan finally appeared with what are called “churros”. They look like squirts of batter deep fat fried. That is what they are – flour, water – I suspect there is some bicarb to cause them to become honeycombed. They are dipped in sugar. Pepe proceeded to dunk his in coffee.

We eventually made it to the boat. After a round of loading up, we made it out of the harbour at about 11.30 but it was all very relaxed and as the wind had not got up we had a gentle motor out to Cope headland. A swell was running but with light wind and sun blazing down it was very pleasant. The reef was buoyed – in fact a large dive RIB was attached to a shot line 50 metres away.

We started putting the kit on. All the others were putting on 3mm wet suits and I felt over dressed in my semi-dry 5mm and left off the shortie making me think that I should lose some more lead. I thought better heavier than not and left my weight at kilos. Juan had the other guys falling around as he hadn’t worn his wet suit for a year and has put on a bit of weight. He seemed to have a lot of bulges. The method of kitting up was to throw the BC and cylinder into the sea and to jump into the water (fully weighted) and put the kit on in the water.

Before I had a chance to discuss a dive plan or agree signals we were in the water. The others were all kitted up but I got badly entangled in the rope and was struggling in the swell finning just to keep my head above water for some time. After swallowing some mouthfuls of water in the process I got myself into the kit. Eventually I was ready but when I tried to descend I couldn’t get below the surface. The problem was quickly solved when Juan finned over with my weight belt on his arm. Mortified with embarassment but relieved that I was fully kitted (although a little over weighted – so much for ad hoc diving). Down the shot line in the clear water, although I kept losing sight of Juan my erstwhile buddy – only recognisable by his bulging wet suit.

We landed on the reef at about 28 m. There was plenty of life there with several large groupers but the others finned along at a tremendous pace and I had no time to use my torch to explore the several large caves. There was a wreck of a fishing boat upright and in good condition with a cloud of fish above it but they waved me on. Suddenly 20 minutes had passed and I was checking air. At one stage we saw a very large grouper well over a metre long which I later realised was what I had been taken to see. The others had already decided to ascend when I was at 50 bar and I was pleased to be on a shot line – although the monofilament lines streaming from the shot line indicated the work we’d had to do to get back to it. At 10m the shot line ran out – we’d been on the wrong one! Juan went to the surface at that stage. The remaining three of us found the other line about 20m away – with such good visibility it was only a matter of scanning around. We had our time at 6m and came to the surface safely. After a scramble we were back in the boat easier than getting out of it.

The sun was strong as we motored slowly back. They all seemed to think it had been a good dive and I’m too inexperienced to disagree. I just think that we were going too fast to see the small life of the reef. They were pleased they had shown me the big grouper. We anchored in the lee of Fraille island where the ruins of houses and ancient mine workings come almost to the shore. Amphorae and other roman debris have been found here where ships have loaded iron ore since 2000 BC. We had a beer sitting in the sun and I spent some time snorkelling in the shallows where I could see star fish, sea urchins and numerous fish (cuckoo wrasse etc) . By three o’clock the others wanted to go and so we tooled over to the harbour where we quickly unloaded and washed kit.

Juan and I had a light lunch in a café with a fine terrace overlooking the harbour. I’d set off for Spain thinking I’d get in three or four dives over 3 days and I’d have a good log to write up. The diving was simple and safe in clear warm water. There was a lot of wildlife although we shot past it in search of the “el gordo”, the fat one. There has been a lot of overfishing but even as we motored along we could see espada (swordfish) and dolphins. I came away very satisfied with one dive because it was the centrepiece to a good weekend and diving isn’t the only thing in life.

PS
I’d be happy to organise a trip to this area of Spain again. There are several commercial dive boat operators at Aguilhas and further North at Cabo de Palos. Cartagena has the Spanish Navy’s dive centre so there is good hyperbaric cover and as Cartagena was founded by the great seafaring Carthaginians it has a long history as a port and naval base and so ought to have wrecks.

Cambridge SAC


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