Diving in Lanzarote: Volcanic Reefs and the Museo Atlántico

Diving in Lanzarote is Atlantic diving with none of the Atlantic's usual punishment. The island's volcanic shore drops into clear, mild water where lava has set into reefs, arches and caverns, most of the best sites are walk-in shore dives, and the season simply never ends — which is why northern Europeans have been coming here to dive in January for decades.

It is also the natural gateway to the wider archipelago: our Canary Islands guide compares the islands, and this article covers the one where most people start.

Puerto del Carmen: Playa Chica and the Cathedral

The island's diving capital is a single small bay. Playa Chica, tucked beside Puerto del Carmen's old town harbour, opens onto more variety than seems reasonable: seagrass and sand at training depths, walls stepping down past 30 metres, and swim-throughs in the lava at every level. Damselfish cloud the rocks, barracuda hang in the blue, octopus and cuttlefish work the reef, and the sand holds rays — and, in winter, angel sharks.

The bay's signature is the Cathedral, a wide-mouthed cavern in the wall at around 30 metres, tall enough to enter comfortably and usually holding a resident grouper the size of the divers visiting it. It is an Advanced dive by depth, and one of the Canaries' best-known sites.

A short boat hop away, the harbour wrecks — a cluster of small vessels sunk off the old harbour — stack between roughly 15 and 40 metres, giving Puerto del Carmen a wreck fix without leaving town.

Playa Blanca and the Museo Atlántico

At the island's southern tip, Playa Blanca's calm bays host Lanzarote's most famous dive. The Museo Atlántico is Europe's first underwater sculpture museum: some 300 life-cast concrete figures arranged on sand at 12-15 metres — a ring of figures, a raft, a garden of hybrid human-cactus forms — placed by sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor and left for the ocean to claim. A decade on, the surfaces carry growth and the fish have moved in.

The depth suits any certified diver, and the concept will be familiar to anyone who has dived Cyprus's MUSAN — the two are the Mediterranean-Atlantic pair of the same idea.

Costa Teguise and the north

The northeast coast around Costa Teguise is the quieter third of the island's diving, with reef fingers and easy entries suited to relaxed second dives and training. Further north the coast wilds out towards the Chinijo Archipelago around La Graciosa — one of Europe's largest marine reserves, run as boat trips in settled weather, with the biggest grouper and the least company.

Marine life: the angel shark island

Lanzarote's headline animal is the angel shark. Critically endangered and effectively gone from the rest of Europe, the species holds on in the Canaries, and Lanzarote's sandy bays are its most dependable meeting point — a flat, broad-winged shark lying buried to its eyes in sand, usually in winter when they move shallow. They are strictly protected; centres brief the rules, which amount to: keep your distance, keep your hands to yourself.

Around them: round stingrays and eagle rays, seahorses in the seagrass, big schools of bastard grunt and bream over every reef, and barracuda overhead.

Seasons and practicalities

The Atlantic here is subtropical, not northern. Water runs about 18-19°C in late winter and 23-24°C by early autumn; locals wear 7mm in February and 5mm the rest of the year. Visibility sits in the 20-30 metre band most days. Flights from the UK and most of Europe run about four hours, which — with the winter season — is the island's real trump card: it is where European divers go when everywhere nearer is cold.

Guided shore dives commonly run €35-50, boat dives and the Museo Atlántico a little more, and courses price well below Europe's summer resorts because the centres work all twelve months.

Booking it

Lanzarote's sites sit in our Spain dive-site catalogue alongside the rest of the Canaries. Diving Scanner's bookable offers start in Cyprus today; as Canary Island centres join, their dives and courses appear in the same search — prices upfront, a small deposit online, the balance paid at the centre.