Submarine Adventure

What they do

They do one thing, and have done it for nearly thirty years: take visitors down to the seabed off Mogán in a recreational submarine with its own pressure hull and large portholes. The trip lasts around forty minutes from boarding to stepping back onto the pontoon, and leaves from the port’s south jetty.

What separates this from the usual “submarine trip” sold on a seafront is the hull: this craft genuinely submerges, and the internal pressure stays regulated, so nobody on board feels the change in depth. That is why it needs no fitness and no swimming ability, and why it is not a dive in the scuba sense: no equipment, no certification, no contact with the water.

Worth being clear about when comparing prices on the quay, because Puerto de Mogán offers several things advertised in similar words — glass-bottom, semi-submersible and submarine — and they are neither the same nor going to the same depth.

What you see down there

The seabed off Mogán is pale sand with good visibility for most of the year, because southern Gran Canaria is sheltered from the northern swell. Shoals of fish pass the portholes, and the route skirts a wreck lying in the area.

The stop that gives the company its name is the “La Atlántida” underwater park: a purpose-built artificial reef shaped like the remains of a sunken city, placed there as a regeneration project so that marine flora and fauna would have something to colonise. It now is colonised, which was exactly the point.