Las Merinas

The Dedo de Dios, the sea stack standing over Puerto de las Nieves, is the bearing: head for its foot, where a group of rocks breaks the surface. The surface swim out to them is long, and it is the main physical demand of the dive. Below the rocks the dive is a lattice of short passages and canyons that stays shallow throughout, with one small swim-through, short and lit by ambient light. Current is scarce to none, so the route is yours to set. Work along the walls and into the passages slowly, because what lives here is small: giant anemones with their cleaner shrimp, small corals, arrow crabs and hermit crabs in the crevices, and nudibranchs for divers who are lucky. At dusk, rays are said to wander the surroundings from time to time.

Everything here is built from the rocks that give Las Merinas its name. They surface close to the foot of the Dedo de Dios, a sea stack whose top was reportedly lost in a 2005 storm, and underneath them the passages interlock like a puzzle in shallow water. The dive is graded very easy and described as a game, which fits: the pleasure is in searching the walls for small corals and anemones, then reaching the swim-through as the one moment that feels like an event. A field of gorgonians once grew here, and people collecting trophies destroyed it. What remains is the small-scale life, and it repays slow, close looking.

The surface swim runs longer than the easy profile suggests, and one diver recommends it for beginners only with a good level of fitness. Keep a steady pace on the way out so you reach the passages calm. The swim-through is short, but on a first visit a guide who knows the layout is worth having. Hold buoyancy along the walls to spare the anemones and small corals, and take nothing away: the gorgonian field here was lost to collectors.