ATLANTIC DIVER
DOUBLE KNOCK-OUT
Who could have predicted a year ago that Madeira would be among 2020’s top 10 international diving destinations? In the face of Covid-19, the Portuguese island’s moderate travel restrictions made it a place of rediscovery. Add to that neighbouring insider-tip Porto Santo, whale-watching and snorkelling with dolphins and you have everything you need for a trip to remember, says DANIEL BRINCKMANN
Methuselah grouper at Garajau.
Manta Diving as seen from water level.
Yellow comb grouper.
Multi-coloured trumpetfish in the Blue Hole cavern.
CAP GARAJAU DESERVES stalker warning signs. The first of several Methuselah grouper swims straight up to the divers in the shallows, only to take its fin off the accelerator at the very last second.
For minutes, man and fish look into each other’s eyes at a hand’s distance, even though Garajau’s big brown grouper have not been served snacks from divers’ BC pockets for ages. Or so I’m told.
The tame seniors must have brilliant memories for fish, because they have been the mascots of Madeira’s underwater world for almost three decades.
No matter how famous they are, the cuddly bass - responsible divers resist the temptation to touch them - represent only a small slice of the biodiversity and under-estimated abundance of fish on the edge of the Gulf Stream.
Every day, squadrons of salema porgies, bream and bastard grunt move across the lava formations near Garajau and elsewhere in the marine park off Madeira’s south coast.
These typical Mediterranean species join colourful warmwater species such as trumpetfish and striped grunt, along with subtropical club-tipped anemones, sponges and hydrozoans reaching their northern distribution limit off Madeira, to form a visually appealing potpourri.
The obligatory check-dive is all it takes to fall for what is remarkable biodiversity by Atlantic standards. A mere 30 steps and a little jump separate Manta Diving’s gearing-up platform from what’s possibly the best house-reef in the eastern Atlantic. There are grouper here too, though not of the cuddly kind.
Along the spacious lido for the guests of the affiliated hotels Galosol and Galomar, four full-fledged dive-sites can be accessed. Caves, tunnels, canyons, little walls and huge lava boulders, as well as rubble, algae and dark-sand bottoms characterise marine habitats of this region.