Punta de La Sal

The route follows an undersea cliff at 10-15 metres to start, where tuna, barracuda, trumpetfish and grouper show up in clear water. From there the profile drops past a line of garden eels and into a field of large boulders around 20 metres, usually holding a good number of moray eels. Divers with less bottom-time margin can cut the dive short here on a shallower variant, or detour into a small cave at 22 metres instead of continuing deeper.

Past the boulders, the route opens onto the gorgonian garden at 30 metres. Sea fans surround the site's centrepiece: a single gorgonian colony over two metres wide. Marbled-electric rays, gilt-headed bream and the occasional angel shark turn up in this deeper zone too. A long way down, a short look. Getting there and back within a sensible no-decompression window, or planning for staged stops if not, is the whole point of the dive.

No entry point of its own. Divers reach Punta de la Sal through Table Top, a neighbouring access chosen because it holds up better when a northerly wind is running than the alternative route in. What it lacks in convenience it makes up in depth and quiet: this is the technical corner of the Arinaga headland, away from the shallower training and beginner routes nearby.

The gorgonian colony is the reason to come. At over two metres wide, it's the kind of single feature a whole dive gets built around rather than one stop among several. Some centres list the same dive simply as The Gorgonia, named for its centrepiece. La Gerardia, along the same coast, does something similar with a gold-coral colony instead. Punta de la Sal's version is a wall of sea fans, not one polyp cluster.

This is an advanced dive, and the operator that runs it says so plainly: suited to divers with current experience and good air consumption, not a first Advanced Open Water outing. The site's length and depth mean the dive is sometimes planned with staged decompression stops rather than a straightforward no-decompression profile. That's a planning detail, not a warning to stay away, but it does mean going with a centre that assesses your experience rather than just checking a certification card.

Whether the land-access permit required for the unpaved tracks elsewhere on this reef also applies to Punta de la Sal's own approach wasn't confirmed for this page. Confirm this first. Check current requirements with your dive centre before planning the drive in. It sits roughly 30 minutes from Playa del Inglés, Maspalomas or Las Palmas, and 40-50 minutes from Puerto Rico or Mogán on the south side of the island.