Russian wreck - El Pajar

Rows of passenger seats, engines and toilets lie among broken plating on the sand, all that is left of a 30-metre hydrofoil. The hull is badly fragmented, so the dive is a slow swim from one piece to the next with no single silhouette to follow.

Grunts, called roncadores in the islands, form a big shoal in the lee of the wreckage, and the local stingrays (chuchos) and angel sharks share the site. Divers also report barracuda, electric rays, octopus and morays tucked among the debris. It is usually dived in the morning as one of two tanks on a boat trip, paired with another south-coast site such as the artificial reef, Pasito Blanco or the Arguineguín reef.

A Russian-built hydrofoil that once carried tourists lies in pieces on the sand off the El Pajar cement works. She sank in 2003 and has been broken up since, so the site looks nothing like it did in her early years on the bottom.

The draw is that combination: an engineered passenger vessel, identifiable by its seat rows and engines, working as a shelter for a dense local fish population in water that stays shallow and easy.

The Meteor-2 was a Russian-built hydrofoil ferry about 30 metres long, used for tourist excursions.1 In the last days of May 2003, about three kilometres off the cement factory at El Pajar, fishermen saw her take on a list and go down stern first at around 13:30. A crew member had left in a zodiac towards Mogán beforehand, and no casualties were counted. Rescue vessels found only diesel drums and debris on the surface, and Guardia Civil divers who inspected the wreck found nobody aboard.2

At the outset she lay on sand at about 17 metres in generally calm water. Other ships found it harder to reach the Arguineguín cement port past the wreck, so the remains were destroyed and split into many pieces.2 A separate account describes the hull as upright and enterable at first, with a main cabin, a pilot cockpit and airline-style seats, until a storm in late 2006 blew it apart. The two accounts name different causes for the break-up and are not tied together by either; both end with a field of fragments.

The older accounts of entering the cabin and cockpit describe the hull before it broke up. Treat the wreck as an open debris field: entry is not part of this dive, and no intact compartment is described today.

The hull's pieces lie on sand, so a loose fin kick lifts silt over the seats and engines and spoils the view for the diver behind. Hold trim a little above the pieces and take the 45-minute dive slowly, one fragment at a time.