Palavas-les-Flots, Carnon & Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone · France · Reef
Les Petites Éponges
A big shallow rock pile at 6-10 m
Area photo: Julien Renoult · CC BY 4.0
A large plateau in front of the cathedral at Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone, ranging in depth from 10 m to 6 m. It is built of rocks piled one on top of another, which leaves holes at every scale, and the dive is spent digging through them. Shallow, easy ground of the kind this coast is made of, and big enough not to be covered in one dive.
Where it is and how deep
43.5051° N, 3.8972° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
Les Petites Éponges lies in front of the cathedral at Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone and is described as a gigantic plateau, ranging in depth from 10 m at its deepest to 6 m on top. It is not one feature: rocks are piled one on top of another across the site, so the ground is uneven and there is far more surface than the plan of it suggests.
That construction leaves holes everywhere, and searching them is the dive: the holes are described as teeming with sar, and conger eels, lobster, octopus and a lot of nudibranchs are logged in them, along with moray eels, which are rare on this stretch of coast. With nothing deeper than 10 m, bottom time is not the constraint here, and the plateau is large enough that two dives on it need not cover the same ground twice.
Marine life and season
- Octopus & cuttlefish
- Nudibranchs
- Macro critters
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Fair | Fair |
Season follows Palavas-les-Flots, Carnon & Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone: Clubs dive year-round, but logged visibility sits near 2 m and the sea at 10-12 °C from January to March; one club runs seven days a week in July and August.
Sources
- Les Petites Éponges, dive site — Scubago/SSI
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