Natural features
The ecological importance of the park is based on its volcanic origin, its arid climate and the fact that it comprises both land and sea areas. Its most important habitats are the Mediterranean steppe, dune formations, salt mines, littoral cliffs and posidonia sea prairies.

Very near to Almeria is The Sierra Cabo Gata, which is part of the park and the most important volcanic area in the Iberian Peninsula.

One of the great riches of Natural Park lies under the sea. A great part of its bottom is covered by posidonia prairies, where a great variety of species (crustacean, molluscs and fishes) find shelter. Among the fishes, apart from the typical Mediterranean groups, like sargos, bleaks and moharras we can also find scorpion fishes and cabrillas.

The cliffs, which represent most part of the coast in the Natural Park, continue down into the sea and form many underwater caves, slopes, blocks and cooled magma rocks, an underwater landscape formed by volcanic eruptions and sea erosion originating one of the most beautiful and better kept sea beds in the Mediterranean Sea.

The rocky forms and the transparency of the waters, which some times enable a visibility of eighteen to twenty meters, transform the place into a paradise for photographic and contemplative diving.

For a better understanding we will divide this underwater landscape into three different types of sea bed:

Sand sea bottom
The layer of sand is thinner at a greater depth and it is settled on slime. That is the bed for the phanerogam seaweed, which is more like a real plant with flowers hiding a rich wildlife: different species of bivalve molluscs, gasteropods (like the purple fish) and cephalopods (like the cuttlefish). We can also find sea urchins and other well known echinoderms like the sand starfish, varieties of crabs and other crustacean, and countless groups of fishes like the red mullet and the thrushfish.

Rocky sea bottom:
Here we can find at a shallow depth a vegetal covering full of seaweed, sponges, madrepores, anemones, false coral, annelids, molluscs, sea urchins, starfishes varieties like the purple starfish, different kinds of colour fishes like the green fish and the moharra, and at a greater depth bigger fishes like the grouper, the moray and the scorpion fish. All of them find big quantities of food among the seaweed and shelter inside the cracks, living in a fragile ecosystem we all have to protect.

Planes of posidonia:
The posidonia is a phanerogam with flowers, leaves, rhizomes and roots, and it forms wide praires which support primary production, oxigenation and it even influence the movement of the water mass. It usually grows on rocky bottoms at about a depth of twenty meters. There dwell several echinoderms and cephalopods species (octopus, giant clam, red starfish...).