Bajo de Fuera

You go in on the mooring off the summit, which comes up to 3 m, and drop onto rock that keeps falling away: the mountain rises from 55 m, so every direction off the top is downhill. The dive the centre describes for recreational divers stays above 20 m, working the upper terraces and the faces immediately below them and coming back to the top for the ascent. Currents here can get up in a very short time, so the guide's briefing covers which side of the rock to work and where to shelter if it turns.

The animal life is the reason the rock is dived, and it is unusually dense for how exposed the position is. Large groupers sit out on the rock, barracuda hold over it, tuna cut past hunting, and turtles, sunfish and eagle rays all turn up. Shoals of amberjack and dentex work the blue edge of the reef, and moray and conger eels are in the cracks below them.

Deeper, the flanks carry the wreckage. Ships piled onto this rock through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the remains have come to rest on top of one another, with at least four hulls still separately recognisable, the Sirio among them. They sit at a depth that puts them outside a normal recreational profile, so reaching them is a planned deep dive with the right gas and training rather than an extension of the dive on the summit.