Pecio Arona

Pecio Arona — the Arona Wreck — is a beginner-accessible wreck dive in Gran Canaria's southwest coastal waters, named for the vessel resting on the seafloor and offering the distinctive pleasures of wreck diving in the warm, clear conditions of the island's most sheltered coast. The southwest of Gran Canaria combines the gentle sea state of the Maspalomas lee with water temperatures that make extended bottom time comfortable year-round, and the Arona wreck provides the focal point for a relaxed, exploratory dive in excellent conditions. The vessel — a boat or small ship that has earned local naming as the Arona — sits at beginner depths, its structure accessible without the decompression management that deeper wrecks require. In the years since its sinking, the wreck has undergone the characteristic transformation of Gran Canaria's coastal artificial reefs: the metal hull colonised by encrusting organisms that transform its surfaces from bare steel into a living community of sponges, anemones, and tube worms, the interior providing shelter for the fish and invertebrates that make wreck diving so richly varied. Schools of bream and salema circulate through the wreck's superstructure in the loose formations typical of schools using a structure as an orientation point. Common octopus occupy holes in the hull with characteristic territorial confidence, their den entrances marked by the scattered shell fragments of recent meals. Large moray eels claim the most enclosed sections of the wreck's interior, their heads visible in typical resting posture from gaps in the hull plating. For beginner divers encountering wreck diving for the first time, Pecio Arona provides the complete experience in accessible conditions: the navigational interest of exploring a structure rather than a natural reef, the transformed ecology of an artificial reef community, and the historical resonance of a sunken vessel — all within the comfortable depth range and calm conditions of Gran Canaria's southwestern coast.