The Acantilados de Maro-Cerro Gordo natural park spans twelve kilometers of limestone cliffs rising two hundred meters above the Alboran Sea, marking the administrative boundary between Granada and Málaga provinces. Designated a protected natural area in 1989, the reserve shelters thirty-six species of nesting seabirds and four endemic subspecies of Mediterranean flora found nowhere else in Andalusia. The cliffs themselves formed during the Jurassic period, their sedimentary layers recording 180 million years of marine deposition before tectonic uplift during the Alpine orogeny tilted them skyward. Marine ecologists catalogued eighty-three fish species within the reserve's coastal waters between 2019 and 2023, including populations of dusky grouper and brown meagre that have rebounded since commercial fishing restrictions took effect in 1995. The underwater topography features submerged caves carved by wave action during the Pleistocene, when sea levels stood 120 meters lower than today's datum. Visibility in these waters averages fifteen to twenty-two meters from May through October, conditions that draw research teams from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography to survey Neptune grass meadows anchored in sand pockets at twelve to eighteen meter depths. The coastline between La Herradura and Maro contains seventeen named coves accessible only by sea, their pebble beaches composed of weathered dolomite and schist eroded from the Sierra de Almijara range visible six kilometers inland. Posidonia oceanica seagrass beds carpet the shallow zones, providing nursery habitat for octopus, cuttlefish, and juvenile sea bream. A la herradura maro cliffs kayak and snorkeling tour typically launches from Playa de la Herradura, following the coastline eastward past Cala del Cañuelo and Cala de Enmedio before reaching the cliff-base caves near Punta de la Mona. Local conservation ordinances prohibit motorized watercraft within three hundred meters of shore throughout the protected zone, a restriction that has made kayaking the primary access method for visitors since the park's establishment. The Andalusian environmental agency maintains two seasonal ranger stations monitoring daily visitor numbers and enforcing the prohibition against disturbing nesting colonies of European shag and Audouin's gull during the April-to-July breeding window. Water temperature ranges from seventeen degrees Celsius in April to twenty-four degrees in August, thermal conditions that support both temperate Atlantic species at the western edge of their range and subtropical immigrants from North African waters.