Manchones reef

The reef sits in shallow water between the island and the mainland and it is more a scatter than a wall: coral heads standing a couple of metres off a sand and grass bottom, separated by channels wide enough to swim down. At eight to ten metres, air lasts, so this is a dive you spend looking rather than moving.

Green turtles are the reliable animal. They work the seagrass in the gaps between the coral, and at this depth you can hang above one for a long time without either of you being in a hurry. Nurse sharks tuck under the bigger heads. Parrotfish and grunts move over the top in numbers.

Part of the MUSA sculpture collection stands on this reef, so figures appear among the coral rather than in a separate gallery, and operators generally treat the sculpture and the reef as two dives on one morning. The Manchones 2 section has more structure than the rest, with swim-throughs and outcrops worth the swim.

Manchones is the largest reef inside the marine park and the one the island is built around, but the honest reason to dive it is not coral quality. It is that a shallow, easy, well-lit reef with turtles on it also happens to carry monumental sculpture, and very few places let you do both on one tank.

The name is worth knowing: manchas is Spanish for patches or stains, and that is exactly what the reef looks like from a boat, dark blotches on pale sand.

This is a shared reef. Snorkel boats work the same water as dive boats, so ascend on a line or with an SMB rather than free.

Buoyancy matters more than depth here. Four to twelve metres is forgiving on gas and unforgiving on contact, and the reef has already lost a lot of its coral to a hurricane. Get your trim sorted on the sand before you go near the heads.

If the sculpture is what you came for, say so when booking. The museum gallery and the reef are sold as separate dives even though they sit on the same patch of seabed.