Cermona II

The anchor line drops onto an open sand plain a few minutes outside Puerto de Mogan's breakwater, where a small hull, most of its upperworks long gone, still holds roncadores in thick schools around the bridge. Groups stay on the line together during descent and ascent; the surrounding sand offers no landmarks if a diver drifts off alone. Once down, the wreck is small enough to see in full on a single dive: work through the bridge, the holds, and the engine room while a resident group of trumpetfish shelters under the stern. Divers who want more can ask about a short swim to a second, older wreck nearby, more fragmented than this one, reachable on a compass bearing when conditions allow. The signature moment belongs to neither wreck, though. Most dives here end with the Puerto de Mogan tourist submarine gliding past overhead, its passengers pressed to the windows photographing the divers below.

Most Gran Canaria wrecks worth diving sit deep enough to need advanced certification and a deco plan. This one doesn't. Bridge, holds, and engine room are all open to exploration without entering a true overhead space, which makes Cermona II the island's entry point into wreck diving rather than its reward for experience. The double identity helps, too: it's a genuine dive site and, at the same time, a fixture on the local submarine tour, watched from below the surface as often as it's watched from a tourist's window. Two decades underwater have taken most of the superstructure, so the boat that still had an intact crew mess room in the mid-2000s is now a leaner, more skeletal shape. What hasn't changed is the accessibility: a two-minute ride from the harbour, calm water on most days, and roncadores thick enough around the hull to make the short crossing worth it on its own.

Built at a Dutch shipyard in 1961 as the fishing trawler De Hoop I, this boat crossed flags and names five times before its working life ended the hard way: seized off West Africa in 2000 for its role in smuggling migrants. It sat idle until 2002, when the operator of Puerto de Mogan's tourist submarine bought it for one purpose. Stripped of anything that could pollute the seabed and ballasted with cement, it was sunk just outside the harbour breakwater to replace an older wreck that storms had already reduced to scrap. That predecessor's identity isn't fully settled even in the single most detailed account of it, so it goes unnamed here, referred to simply as the older wreck nearby.

Buoyancy matters more than strength on this dive. The aging hull sheds a fine layer of growth if disturbed, so trim carefully rather than settling on the deck to look inside. A torch earns its keep in the darker corners of the bridge and engine room. When the tourist submarine is in the area, the etiquette is simple: gather visibly on top of the wreck, wave, and stay well clear of its propeller wash rather than swimming toward it. A typical dive here runs about 50 minutes, and nitrox isn't needed at this depth for standard no-decompression diving.