El Marrajo

El Marrajo — the Mako — takes its name from one of the ocean's most formidable predators: the shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus), the fastest shark in the sea, whose occasional appearances in the productive Atlantic waters around Fuerteventura's southwestern coast have left their mark in the local dive community's naming of this site. The mako's speed — capable of reaching sixty kilometres per hour — makes it one of the rarest dive encounters even in productive pelagic environments, but the site's name preserves the record of its historical presence here. Fuerteventura's southwestern coast near Punta de Jandía is among the Canary Islands' most remote and productive dive areas, the open Atlantic upwelling creating conditions that sustain the food web from plankton through baitfish to the apex predators that attract divers willing to make the effort to reach this isolated section of coast. While mako sharks are genuinely rare on any specific dive, the productive waters here support the prey species that attract these and other large pelagic predators. As a dive site, El Marrajo is accessible at beginner level despite its dramatic name — the site's eponymous predator is extremely unlikely to appear on any given dive, and the actual diving experience is built around the volcanic reef and sandy seafloor habitat of the southwestern coast rather than pelagic open-water hunting. The reef formations here are colonised by the Atlantic community typical of Fuerteventura's productive waters, and the sandy areas between basalt outcrops provide habitat for the angel sharks that are far more reliably encountered than their deep-water mako counterparts. The name carries the romance of pelagic diving and the memory of encounters past, reminding divers of the possibility that always exists in productive Atlantic water — that the unusual and the magnificent might appear on any dive, in any conditions, if the ocean chooses to oblige.