Benidorm Island

Isla de Benidorm doesn't hand you one profile. It hands you a choice, sector by sector, fifteen to twenty minutes from Benidorm Port by boat. Punta Garbi, on the southwest side, runs along a wall past ledges and craters, with damselfish schools thick enough to change colour as the afternoon light shifts. Los Arcos, close to the island, stays around and just past 20 metres over rock walls dressed in calcareous algae and anemones. La Cara Norte carries big schools of damselfish and saddled bream at the shallower stretch, giving way to meagre and forkbeard as the wall deepens.

La Llosa is the outlier. It sits several hundred metres off the island rather than hugging it, starting at a sandy platform around 7 metres before the wall drops away to 30. Current here is stronger and less predictable than anywhere else around the island. On the exposed south face, Cueva del Chango opens onto deeper water where eagle rays, stingrays and occasionally sunfish or tuna pass through, alongside an older Posidonia meadow set slightly apart from the main growth, where dentex and barracuda tend to gather. El Embarcadero, sheltered from levante winds, is where sand-dwellers like torpedo rays and weever fish hide when the rest of the island is choppy. Bajo del Faro, near the lighthouse, offers a fourth option to around 25 metres for divers who want depth without La Llosa's current.

No other dive near Benidorm combines this short a boat ride with this much range. A diver can work a sheltered wall at Los Arcos one morning and take on La Llosa's current the next, all from the same fifteen-minute crossing. That's the real draw for a resort town: choice, not just proximity.

The waters here sit inside the Parc Natural de Serra Gelada, protected since 2005, but with no diver permit or quota to book around. That's a genuine point of difference from Tabarca, Alicante's marine reserve that caps diver numbers by the day; Cabo de San Antonio, the coast's other reserve further south, permits recreational diving but without an individual daily quota. Locally, the island also goes by an older name, Isla de los Periodistas, dating to a journalists' gathering held in Benidorm in May 1970. It's a nickname rather than a second identity, but it turns up often enough in older references to be worth knowing.

Book through a Benidorm, Villajoyosa or Altea-based centre; several run trips here, including Nisos Benidorm and Ali-Sub. The hourly tourist water-taxi that also serves the island is a separate, non-diving service and won't get you underwater.

Bring a wetsuit outside May-September; a semi-dry or thicker suit covers the cooler months. The surface temperatures above don't hold at depth: La Llosa's wall and the deeper stretches of Cueva del Chango sit below the summer thermocline and run noticeably cooler than a shallower sector on the same day. Water clarity is generally good, often past 20 metres, best in spring and autumn when it's calmer. Boat traffic bunches up near the surface where dive boats and water-taxis share the same approach, so stick close to your guide on ascent. If you spot a dead seabird on or near the island, leave it alone rather than handling it.

Day trips are the norm here rather than night dives. Certification requirements shift by sector: the shallower walls suit an Open Water diver, but ask your centre about Advanced Open Water before booking La Llosa or Cueva del Chango on a windier day.