The Realm of the Conger Eel

This time we went to a diving site called El Montiell. It is about 10 mins to the north from the village of Llafranc in Costa Brava. The place is a huge rock more or less perpendicular to the coast, about 100 metres long, going from 10 to 25 m deep. All along the rock there is a small canyon dividing it in two halves plus some more cracks in the most shallow part. Deeper than those 25 m there is only sand. After the short ride to the diving site and a briefing in several languages we jumped to the water. The plan was going along the central canyon till we reached the deepest point, and then going along the southern side of the rock, back to the ancore, spending the last part of the dive in the cracks around the surfacing point. We were told that this would be a quiet dive, without any currents and good visibility, and that we would see lots of fish. It was in fact better than I expected.

Inside the canyon we had the first encounters with scorpion fish of remarkable size laying motionless on the bottom. As they can change the colour of their skin, often they look like one more stone covered with seaweed, but getting closer first you see the eye observing you, and if you came closer, the dorsal fin raises warning you that they are poisonous. Only under the light of a torch they show their real bright red colour. Almost at the end of the canyon, when both slopes sink in the sand, in an area full of small caves we were very lucky to see an adult, about 70 cms long Torpedo torpedo, a species of round-bodied electric ray, capable to give electric shocks up to 220V and 1A of intensity. It was lying in its cave, half covered with sand, waiting for the night as they are more active only after dusk. Just a few metres further we could see a very nice bright coloured lobster pointing at us with its long antennae and under it, two more good sized scorpion fish. Already very happy for what we had seen, almost in the deepest point, right before starting the way back, we were met by a muray eel. Its head outside the hole, blue coloured, with a face that resembles and old woman, opening and closing its four teeth mouth. And after saying good bye to the muray eel, we entered the realm of the conger eel.

I don’t know how many of those we saw. Many. Sometimes we saw the tail, sometimes the head, or parts of the body through holes in their caves. The biggest of them was a thick as my arm. Of the last one we saw only the tail, but tackling it a bit we could see the head popping up through the other exit of the cave. They have big eyes and thick lips, and curious as they are, often they come out to have a look who is coming. Towards the end of the dive we were exploring the last cracks around the ancore, being rewarded with the sight of some brittle stars, a beautiful hermit crab with three anemones on top of its shell, plus a few bright red Galathea crabs and some small prawns that go out of their holes only at night. In total we were an entire hour under the water, including the three minutes safety stop at three metres. Unforgettable.