Pecios del Puerto del Carmen

Pecios del Puerto del Carmen — the Wrecks of Puerto del Carmen — is an umbrella designation for the advanced wreck diving available in the deeper sections of Puerto del Carmen's coastal waters, where multiple vessels have been sunk deliberately or accidentally over the years and have undergone the biological transformation that makes wreck diving in Lanzarote's warm, productive Atlantic waters so richly rewarding. Puerto del Carmen is the largest resort town on Lanzarote and the island's primary dive hub, with a diving infrastructure — multiple dive centres, a well-organised beginner programme, and locally trained guides with deep knowledge of the coastal environment — that serves both the accessible beginner sites and the advanced wrecks in the deeper waters offshore. The wrecks that constitute the Puerto del Carmen pecio collection represent decades of deliberate reef creation and the gradual accumulation of accidental sinkings. The vessels rest at depths that justify the advanced designation: the combination of time required to reach the wrecks, the bottom time management appropriate to their resting depth, and the current that can affect the Puerto del Carmen dive zone at tidal changes all demand the experience and technical capability of a practised diver. The reward for engaging with these demands is access to artificial reef structures that have developed rich biological communities over years of colonisation: sponge and anemone encrusted hulls, superstructures alive with schooling fish, and the large moray eels and common octopus that make wreck diving in Lanzarote consistently productive for wildlife encounters. Some of the wrecks in the Puerto del Carmen collection may be explorable internally — hold penetrations and superstructure exploration for divers with appropriate training and experience. Others are best experienced as exterior artificial reefs, their outer surfaces and surrounding sand providing both the biological interest of an established wreck reef and the angel shark encounters that are possible on any sandy Lanzarote seabed. The Puerto del Carmen wreck collection represents advanced Canarian wreck diving at its most varied.