Sète & Frontignan

The diving is boat-based and short-range. École de Plongée Sétoise and Odyssée Plongée work out of Sète, and Plongée Passion sits on Frontignan's east port with a barge and a semi-rigid moored ten metres in front of the centre and free parking twenty metres away. The named sites lie a few kilometres off the two harbours: École de Plongée Sétoise's own list runs to the submerged breakwater, Les Patates, Le Décapsuleur, Quilles Sud and the Planier wreck. The Étang de Thau sites behind the towns are run separately, from the lagoon side, and are used for baptism and biology dives rather than as a second open-sea outing.

The ground is rock on sand rather than reef. Le Jardin is a wide, shallow rocky site of slabs, small caves and shelters; Brise-lames follows the old submerged breakwater as a long ridge of encrusting life; Les Patates is three mounds of rock tipped offshore during the breakwater renovation, sitting at about 14 m. Le Décapsuleur starts on a plateau of roughly a metre and runs into arches and crevices along a wall. Théâtre de la Mer has a cannon on its ledge and a machine gun on the sand, and Le Planier, the 1905 trader, is the deepest of the open-sea sites at 18 m.

Frontignan reads as a second base town rather than a separate destination: its centre works the Sète roster, and no dive site of its own was found on the Frontignan side. Conditions rather than depth set the limits. Quilles Sud is exposed, with unpredictable visibility and occasional strong current, and bottoms out at 10 m; Le Décapsuleur is open to south-easterly wind; the breakwater dive runs close to boat traffic at the port entrance. In the lagoon, boat speed is capped and the professional shellfish lots are closed to swimming and diving, so lagoon dives are planned around them.

This suits divers starting out or diving locally: École de Plongée Sétoise runs baptisms from age eight and grades its courses at 6, 12, 18 and 20 m, which covers the named open-sea sites. Spring brings cuttlefish back to the coast and the lagoon sessions turn up seahorses and nudibranchs, so the interest is small and close rather than large and distant. Divers who want walls, gorgonians and deep wrecks should look along the coast to Marseille and the Calanques, or south to Banyuls-sur-Mer and the Côte Vermeille reserve.