Punta Loma

The boat leaves Puerto Madryn and takes about 20 minutes to reach the Punta Loma reserve, one of only three boats allowed inside the protected area at any time. Groups are capped at six divers plus instructors, and no more than 24 people are permitted in the water across the whole reserve. You drop onto a rocky bottom in about 6 m of water, where the reef forms low ledges and overhangs that shelter the local ecosystem — the same terrain the resident colony of roughly 600 South American sea lions uses as its base.

Divers hold position behind a marked buoy line set 50 m from the haul-out; the sea lions, not the divers, decide whether to approach, and juveniles often break away from the colony to spiral around a diver's fins in the shallow water. Wildlife rangers watch the reserve from the cliffs above to make sure the line is respected, and the whole dive is capped at 40 minutes before the boat heads back to Puerto Madryn.