Tenerife

The south coast is the working coast. Centres cluster between Las Galletas, Los Cristianos and the resorts either side, and a normal morning is two dives — a boat hop of a few minutes, or a van ride to a rocky entry and a walk in with a guide timing the sets. Operations run in every month of the year and a large share of the business is training, so schedules are built around courses as much as around fun dives, and the site is picked for what the swell is doing that day.

Growth is the thing to adjust to. Sponge, anemone and turf algae encrust the rock instead of coral, so the colour comes from the fish rather than from the reef. Sites sort into three types: dark sand flats where the interest is camouflaged and slow to find, rock structure you swim through and along, and small wrecks that concentrate fish on otherwise open ground. On the flats everything is the colour of the ground, and a guide earns the fee by spotting what you would otherwise fin straight over.

Two things make it worth choosing. One is shore diving: a handful of east-coast entries let you walk in without a boat schedule, which makes second dives, night dives and long macro hunts cheap and easy to repeat. The other is winter. While much of northern Europe is out of the water, the south coast keeps working, temperatures hold in the high teens, and angelsharks — the Canaries are the last stronghold of a critically endangered species — are reported far more often on the sand in the cooler months than in high summer.

It suits new divers, people taking courses, and anyone who enjoys hunting small things on sand: octopus, cuttlefish, nudibranchs and rays repay a slow, low-mileage style. Families and mixed groups do well, since one site often serves a first dive and a photographer's hour. Kit and tuition are inexpensive by western European standards, and a week of diving fits around a family holiday. Divers after schooling pelagics, coral reef or warm water will be disappointed.