Buceo Canarias

The centre occupies a unit inside the Muelle Deportivo marina in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a site that also holds car parking, restaurants and bars, toilets and showers, chandlery shops and a petrol station. Buceo Canarias has worked there in recreational diving since 1996 and has trained thousands of divers. The premises include a pool for course practice, a classroom with audiovisual equipment, a shop stocking Mares, Aqualung, Tecnomar and Cressisub, an air and nitrox filling system, equipment hire, a store room where guests can leave their kit, and a maintenance and repair service. A boat carries the group to the dive sites near the marina, while a van takes divers to shore entries elsewhere on the island.

The four instructors teach courses certified by SSI and PADI, running between the first try dive, the Open Water Diver grade, Dive Master and instructor level, with specialities such as wreck, night, navigation and deep diving, dry suit, buoyancy, nitrox, rescue, oxygen administration and first aid. Outings cover ten dive sites around the island: El Cabrón, the first area put forward for a marine reserve on Gran Canaria, with underwater cliffs, caves, arches and tunnels; Sardina del Norte, Caleta Baja, El Arona, La Catedral, the Cueva de la Burbuja, El Angela Pando and Roque Ceniciento, the last two beside La Isleta. Alongside the variety of marine life there are wrecks lying within no decompression limits and lava formations with arches, passageways and backlit openings, in water of good visibility and steady temperature, with no thermoclines during a dive.