La Palma

Diving here is split across three coasts, and a car is part of the plan. Los Cancajos on the east side is the base of the island's PADI centre, which lists a west-coast base at Puerto Naos as reopening, and a family SSI centre works the Fuencaliente coast at the southern tip, five to fifteen minutes from the sites it rates highest. Most of it is shore diving, kitting up at the beach and walking in, using the steepness of the island to reach shallow and very deep ground from the same entry, as at Puerto Naos - Playa Chica. Charco Verde is one of the few sites clearly more comfortable by boat, and remote entries such as El Puertito and El Aljibe need a 4x4 over lava fields.

The seabed is volcano, and recently so: the 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption ran 85 days, the longest and most damaging known on the island, and the marine reserve is now noted for a seabed that eruption transformed. Los Arcos runs a route of more than ten arches between 5 and 10 m, Cueva de la Capilla leads about 70 m into the dark to a surfacing chamber the centres compare to a church, and Playa La Salemera is a lava field with sand patches dropping to roughly 40 m. What grows on the black rock is the colour: red gorgonian fields with black coral below them, violet algae and yellow verongia sponges at La Lava, and a garden-eel field past the lava labyrinth at Mordor.

It suits divers who are content to drive to their diving and to read terrain rather than count big animals, and who want both shallow arch swim-throughs and a wall the local centres reserve for experienced divers. Entries at exposed headlands such as Punta de los Molinos are awkward and can carry strong current, and part of the south-west coast sits inside a capped marine reserve. The catch is that La Palma is not one compact base: the east, west and south hubs face different sides of the island, so a week means either moving or driving daily. Divers who want everything within walking distance of one harbour are better served by El Hierro, where the whole operation runs out of La Restinga.