Baía do Cerro do Cão

The bay is in the northern part of the Berlengas, next to a rock that carries the silhouette of a lying dog, which is what the site is named for. Below the surface the granite is cut into canyons that parallel the rock formation, so the route reads straight off the topography: pick a cut, follow it, and use the walls either side to hold your line.

The passages are the other half of it. Several of them run as underwater arches, and they are what turns a set of parallel cuts into a route rather than a single trench. Twenty-five metres is as deep as the site goes, so there is no depth pressure on the plan, and abundant fish and pelagic schools stack over the cuts, which makes the shallower half of the dive worth saving gas for.