Richies Place

The boat ride from the old harbour is under ten minutes. Divers drop on the line of buoys that mark the swim zone at the back of Playa Grande, settle to about 20m on sand, and follow the reef edge to the working depth around 25m. The first landmark is a single-diver swim-through arch in the lava wall. It frames the rest of the route.

From the arch the route runs with the cliff on the right to the memorial plaque set into the wall for Richard. Turning back at the arch and keeping the wall on the left, the dive drops into the canyon. The wall steps down, the canyon floor opens at the base, and a large cave on the canyon floor holds the first branch of Dendrophyllia ramea, the orange coral that guides anchor the site on. Across the canyon outlet a single tall pointed rock holds the main refuge for the narwhal-shrimp swarm. Smaller fissures around it shelter the same species in lower numbers.

The exit climbs the cliff over a group of rocks onto a wider overhang where the second Dendrophyllia branch grows. Curtains of Gerardia macaronesica hang under the reef edge here, dense enough that older trip reports single them out as the visual highlight. From this point divers either retrace toward the descent buoy or, if conditions allow, the guide turns the dive into a drift west along the back of Playa Grande. The safety stop runs in mid-water on the guide's SMB line; there is no wall or bottom at stop depth.

Three things separate Richies from the rest of the Puerto del Carmen boat rotation. The orange-coral branches are predictable enough that the route is built around them, which is rare. The memorial plaque to Richard gives the dive a human anchor most lava reefs in Lanzarote do not have. And the depth structure delivers what the shallower Puerto del Carmen sites cannot: the 30-35m sand fans below the reef are where divers regularly turn up Squatina squatina and where Bodianus scrofa shows in numbers that older accounts treat as unusual for the Canary Islands.

The site is read by local guides as scenery first, fish second. Walls, drop-offs, sharp rocks, caves, canyons, sand and arches — the landscape is the reason to come down here. The fish list is a bonus.

Richies Place is named for Richard Lieftink, a Dutch guide who showed it to centres in Puerto del Carmen and gave it its place in the local rotation. He died abroad of non-diving causes while on vacation; the surviving local centres set a memorial plaque into the reef wall near the main arch. Divers pass the plaque a few metres after coming through the first arch on the standard route. The exact year of the site's discovery is not on public record. The name predates the early-2010s catalogue era when the dive first appeared in published Lanzarote diving guides under the spelling used by international operators.

Carry a torch. The two Dendrophyllia branches and the narwhal-shrimp refuge read dull without one, and the colour of the orange coral is most of the reason to look at it. The mid-water safety stop is the part of the dive that catches people off guard. There is no wall or bottom at stop depth; you hold depth on the guide's SMB line and your own buoyancy. Carry a personal SMB regardless of group size, because the boat captain finds the surface group by SMB.

Plan around 25m. The canyon and the sand let depth slide easily, and at 30-35m the NDL closes fast. Nitrox at EAN32 buys useful bottom time and is worth the surcharge. Surface conditions occasionally shut the site even when Puerto del Carmen looks calm from shore, so check with the operator the morning of the dive.