Aqua-Marina welcomes us back

Much of the Canary Islands is volcanic. This creates amazing landscapes where hardened larva beds are clearly identifiable, and craters dot the horizon. The volcanic topography continues underwater, making each dive distinct. Vegetation does not grow on lava, so the combination of diving over bare lava beds and strange formations makes for a very eerie atmosphere.

One of the dive centres that is famliliar with a stretch of the south coast of Tenerife best is Aqua-Marina. Morganonline and Aqua-Marina worked together when we were in Tenerife in the summer of 2005, finding our way around the islands and building our network. This time round owners Madge, Steve and Neil welcomed us back. For us it is essential to work with local dive centres as they best know the sites and the sea-life that you’re likely to find. We sat down together, armed with a list of animals and plants that we needed to film, and planned some dives. Our list was diverse, including octopus, schools of fish, areas devoid of life, pumps on a wreck – and everything imaginable in between. Undaunted, Madge advised us on the sites where we could best get our images, and booked us on different dives.

We have now done about six dives with Aqua-Marina, each of them enjoyable and each of them successful in terms of film images. Here is a brief snapshot of our last two dives.

El Condesito
The ‘Condesito’ is a wrecked cement carrier, lying at about 18 metres. The story goes that it hit the rocky coastline one calm Christmas night fifteen years ago, when the captain overdid his Christmas celebrations with a bottle of good strong Canarian rum. He not only drowned his sorrows, but he also drowned his ship. Luckily for him, while his ship was wrecked beyond repair, he managed to survive to tell the tale.

I like wrecks because they always have something mysterious about them. And if they are safe to penetrate, all the better. Swimming down ladders, squeezing through broken passageways, looking out of portholes into the sea certainly gives a different perspective to being on board. The Condesito, while not a large ship, rises out of the sand, listing dramatically on her starboard side. We needed images of the propeller and of pumps, and managed to get them.

Roncadores del Faro
While the rough translation of this dive site means The Lighthouse’s Bastard Grunts, named for the large schools of Bastard Grunts, we actually dived the site in search of octopus. Most of the time you have to search crevices and holes for octopus, an eye or a tentacle tip giving these appealing creatures away. This time though, we had just descended when we saw an octopus simply sitting on the a small stretch of sand in between the rocks. It seemed to be waiting for us as it did not move away at all.

Apart from having a justifiable reputation for intelligence, octopi are also very curious animals and to me this is part of their appeal. Most animals are attracted to our shiny underwater film camera house, and this octopus was no exception. While Ernie was filming it from half a metre or so away, the camera quietly resting on the sea floor, it looked at the camera and stretched a tentacle out, exploring the lens. I wouldn’t know if the octopus was interested in the housing itself, or if it saw its own reflection in the lens, but it was a very special moment. After a thorough feel of the lens, it had satisfied its curiosity and swam away, head first and tentacles propelling it forward.