Scuba Gran Canaria

Twelve trips come up when you look for a dive day on Gran Canaria, and the first thing worth knowing is that they are not twelve versions of the same outing. Eight of them put a tank on your back. The other four are snorkelling trips: mask, fins and the surface. Both are good days out, they ask different things of you, and the cheapest number on this page belongs to the second group.

Four of the eight dives are written for people going under for the first time. Two say so in the title, one promises the feeling of being weightless in the underwater world for the first time, and one describes learning the ropes with a certified PADI instructor — the only listing of the twelve that names PADI at all. They run two to four hours and cost between $96 and $101.

The other four assume you already hold a certificate. Three of them are single outings: a three-hour trip along the Las Canteras coast, a morning dive of four and a half hours with one or two dives depending on your level, and a six-hour day of shore and boat dives described as perfect for experienced divers. Two of those three carry six and nine reviews between them, so read the count and not only the star.

The fourth is the outlier in every direction. Three days of theory, pool practice and open water dives, $507, and at the end of it a certificate to dive independently to a maximum depth of 18 metres. It is the only listing on this page that leaves you with something you keep, and the only one that is not a single outing.

One more thing, because the search numbers ask for it. Around 570 people a month look for “Puerto Rico Gran Canaria scuba diving”, and not one of these twelve listings names Puerto Rico. We are not going to pretend otherwise. What the descriptions do name is Las Palmas, the Las Canteras coast, a protected bay on the island’s beaches and the southwest coast — and that is what you would actually be booking.

The four snorkelling trips deserve to be read as one group. The cheapest is $39 from the shore, with pickup from selected areas; there is a two-and-a-half-hour trip at Las Canteras beach in Las Palmas, a two-hour outing where the guide sets up all the gear, and a three-hour boat trip along the southwest coast. Three of the four say the equipment comes with the trip.

Across the twelve, 1,664 people have left a review and the weighted average is 4.64. The spread runs from 4.0 to 4.9, which is narrow enough that the stars alone will not decide this for you. One trip carries 498 of those reviews at 4.8 — close to a third of everything written about the niche — while four listings have fewer than fifteen.

So which is the best diving Gran Canaria has to offer? The honest answer is that it turns on a certificate. Without one you are choosing between four instructor-led first dives that differ by an hour or two and a few dollars. With one you are choosing between a morning, a three-hour trip and a six-hour day. If you would rather stay on the surface, that starts at $39.