Imagine diving the lunar sea of tranquility. Dark monochrome sand and islands of jagged grey rocks rising steeply from the depths. Fill it with some of the clearest water you have ever dived in and add a sprinkling of fish.Imagine diving the lunar sea of tranquility. Dark monochrome sand and islands of jagged grey rocks rising steeply from the depths. Fill it with some of the clearest water you have ever dived in and add a sprinkling of fish.
It's what I am daydreaming about while diving at La Palometa, Roques de Anaga, off the northern tip of Tenerife. The water is so incredibly clear I can almost see the entire dive without having to swim anywhere. I could be gliding across the moon in a spacesuit rather than diving in the Atlantic.
Closer to the rock the lunar impression breaks down. The grey volcanic basalt has cooled into a jigsaw puzzle of upright crystalline columns. The rocks actually have a fine and almost invisible coating of short hairy hydroids. A light flock wallpaper patterned by a stampede of grazing spiny sea urchins.
We swoop down a canyon to see fronds of black coral growing beneath a slight overhang. The light and my eyes deceptively tell me the depth is about 15 metres. My dive computer says 40 metres. Broken columns of rock fractured from the face are tumbled like a game of jackstraws below.
The fine weather and calm sea is holding, so next day Juan Carlos takes us on an even longer boat ride; over one and a half hours by RIB past Roques de Anaga and on to a submerged reef called Catedral de las Nieves.
Looking over the side of the RIB the water is a really strong deep blue. The sort of blue that suggests very clear and very deep. As we cross the reef the echo sounder is hardly needed, a casual glance over the side shows the grey basalt below.
We descend into a house sized tunnel, straight down into the top of the reef. The name of the site, Catedral de las Nieves, gives it away. Even I can translate the beginning of that bit of Spanish.
I can see the bottom of the cave below me, ahead it widens into a huge hyperbolic arch to the open sea. While descending I turn on my back to take photographs looking up at other divers entering the cave. I drift downwards until my cylinder makes a gentle clunk on the rock. Once again the clear water disguises the scale of the scenery. The depth is 45 metres and I can just see the boat silhouetted above a corner of the entrance.
I spot my first chucho of the trip on another dive at the Roques de Anaga. This time on the Roque de Fuera, a vertical sided knife of basalt that rises a good 50 metres straight out of the sea. We are swimming along the wall at 20 metres when I spot it on a patch of sand below.
I spiral down to 35 metres and approach commando style, just negatively buoyant and crawling on my elbows in the sand. The chucho flutters and digs in to hide. My first shot spooks it slightly, it circles and digs in again. I manage a couple more before it flutters off across the sand and fades into the blue distance.
Maybe I should explain my efforts to become familiar with local names for the fish. Earlier in the week I had become involved in a comedy of translation. I had asked Juan Carlos about stingrays and where we would fine some. Whilst we agreed on the rest of the conversation, somehow stingray did not translate literally between English and Spanish.
I resorted to signs and gestures. A peculiar multi-lingual game of charades. I flapped my arms and got "Manta". I shortened my arms and flapped again. "Tortuga"; I already knew that was Spanish for turtle. As in any game of charades, eventually all the clues click and the answer suddenly becomes obvious: "Chucho".
Back at the shop Juan Carlos gives me a fish id card with names in Spanish and Latin. I am beginning to understand why scientists insist on Latin names for everything.
Just north of Santa Cruz, capital of the Canary Islands, the remains of the steamer Westburn lie in 30 metres, victim of an unusual sequence of events in the First World War.
The story begins with the German auxiliary cruiser Moewe's comerce raiding foray across the Atlantic. Over the first 2 months of 1916 the Moewe captured or sank 15 steamers, of a total tonnage of 57,835 tons. Some ships were sunk, others returned to Germany under prize crews.
Such was the success of the Moewe that there were soon too many prisoners on board for the supplies available. Extending the Moewe's raiding foray was considered more important than continuing to hold the captured crews, so the Westburn was used to land 200 merchant seamen in Tenerife, neutral Spanish territory.
Prisoners ashore, on 24 February 1916 the Westburn raised anchor for the last time. Waiting at sea was the British armoured cruiser Sutlej. Rather than risk loosing the prize ship to the British, the Westburn was scuttled with explosives.
The visibility is once again spectacularly clear. Descending the shot line I can pick out the general shape of the wreck almost as soon as I am below the surface. The wreck lies on an even keel, but is mostly broken down to the seabed. Engine, boilers and all machinery have obviously been salvaged.
My first inclination is to settle in to take pics of the many and diverse fish that are generally inhabiting the wreckage, but Juan Carlos urges me on towards the bows.
I soon realise what all the fuss is about. Huge dense shoals of fish cover the forward quarter of the wreck. The fish id card identifies them as "Salema", which I later identified as saupe, and "Sargo", which I could already recognise as some kind of bream. A smaller and more spread out shoal of yellow tail snapper cruise in and out, the dense shoals of saupe and bream parting to let them through.
La Catedral de las Nieves had been an amazing experience, but from a photographer's point of view the scale was just too big. A mile or so north of the Westburn, the caves at La Cueva Del Roquete are built on a smaller and more manageable scale.
From the RIB I can see a grey seam of lava in the mostly red rocks of the cliffs rising hundreds of metres above. Below water it has cooled and solidified into a reef of billowing pillow lava that splurges across the sand leaving deep undercuts, caves and arches. They don't have the awe inspiring majesty of la Catedral de las Nieves, but are much more photographer friendly.
Ashore I settle down with the other divers for lunch at a harbour-side café. Some speak English with various levels of expertise. Underwater there had been no language barrier. Over lunch most of the conversation is in Spanish, but funnily enough I find that with a few words of translation I can follow what is being said.
There is a discussion of PADI versus CMAS training schemes, talk about our dives and what they had caught on video and digital cameras, and generally lots of joking and laughing.
I point to the third sardine from the left on Juan Carlos' plate "I know that one, I took his photograph yesterday". Diving and smiles are our common language.