freediving spots near hyeres, france, accessible without boat

[joshmeyer]

hey folks,

a friend of mine an my humble self are going to spend some days near hyeres in france later this month. we are looking for easy accessible diving spots with at least 10 to 15m of depth.

as none of us has any experience driving/renting motorboats and we'd like to stay near the coast, the spots need to be in rather protected areas without heavy dangerous boat traffic or currents.

i've attached a map of the area we would be able to move in, so if some of you know nice spots you could mark them on it and attach it to your post again.
(damn, just noticed that jpeg is way too large for attachments in this forum to be cleary visible, the resolution is much too small, so i'll be using an external image hoster. i kindly ask you to either save that picture to your computer, draw in your suggestion and load it back up to an image hoster of your choice or you could cut the interesting part out of the map, point out your suggestion and then attach that small image to your post via the forum's own ability. either way, i'll copy all suggestions into the large
original map for everyone to see. thank you all for your effort this request for help takes!)

View image: map


thank you in advance for all of your answers,
josh


PS: someone mentioned the spearboy forum to get the best information about divingspots in souther france so i've tried to post there, but... you have to register to post and they have some kind of bad-ass-registration-barrier which is too much for my little knowledge of the french language. you have to answer a question about some kind of fish and it's all in french... well, i translated the question and still don't know what the want from me...

 

[trux]

If you just need 10-15m, that's not a problem - you can dive almost anywhere. As soon as you see some rocks, the 10-15m will be mostly right there. No need for a boat. I've been to Hyers only very shortly and it is already some 15 years ago, but if you avoid the beaches, you could dive/snorkel directly from the shore almost anywhere. For example the presqu'île de Giens was quite beautiful, and even better is the island of Porquerolles facing Hyères and the Giens. Both belong to the national park (http://www.portcrosparcnational.fr/), and are a researched destination for divers. You should see more underwater life there than elsewhere on the Med coast. Boat traffic is regulated too, so it should be better than in many other places. You can get to the island easily from Hyers or Giens (Porquerolles - How to get there, Ferries Porquerolles, La Tour Fondue Porquerolles).

If you want to have some exceptional freediving experience, contact Stéphane Mifsud who has a freediving school in Hyères (M.I.F. :: Erreur)

PS: forgot to mention, but it goes without saying - in the national reserve, spearfishing is forbidden, of course

 

[joshmeyer]

thank you trux for your answer.

we visited port cros national parc last year and spent some
water time at "baie de la palud", a separated little bay, i've marked
it in the picture attached. this location was easy to find, not far to walk to and had indeed a really wide variety of fish to watch but i remember it being rather shallow.
at least the part which was obiously meant for "normal people" to visit.

what do you think about the purple marked spot?
is there any place where you aren't allowed to go into the water
(as this is still a national parc to protect the fish and plants)?

 

[trux]

As far as I know only suba-diving is restricted in some areas there. Have a look ath the map of diverse restriction in Port-Cros:

Parc national de Port-Cros : Ile de Porquerolles, Presqu'Ile de Giens, Cap Lardier - securite

For the depth, you best avoid the northern shores (continent facing), and look better to the southern sides of the Presque'ille de Giens, Porquerolles, or Port-Cros. Or go to the nearest port there and get a naval map of the area - it shows the depth everywhere. You can see it for example here, but the details are not sufficient for good readability, so you may need to search a better map online, or buying one:

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