Diving in Madeira: Dive Sites, Garajau Reserve and Seasons

Where Madeira is and how divers reach Funchal and Porto Santo

Two islands carry the diving: Madeira, where Funchal is the base, and Porto Santo to the northeast. Almost everything happens on Madeira's south coast, because the Garajau management plan names north and northeast as the dominant winds and puts the island under the cold Canary Current. Azul Diving, a PADI centre at Funchal marina, puts the reserve and the Afonso Cerqueira wreck within 15 minutes of the harbour. Cooler water than the Mediterranean means more neoprene than most divers pack and more lead with it, so run the numbers on our scuba weight calculator first.

Porto Santo is a separate trip, not a day trip. Direct Ferries lists Porto Santo Line as the only operator on the Funchal route: around six weekly sailings, roughly 2 hours 30 minutes, 80.8 km (44 nautical miles), starting fares listed at $43. Prices change. Porto Santo Airport (PXO) also lists scheduled Binter Canarias flights to Funchal, which swaps the crossing for a flying-after-diving problem.

Funchal gets you the reserve, the Cabo Girão wreck and the eastern point without moving hotels. Porto Santo gets you two wrecks in very clear water and little else, which suits three or four days.

The Garajau reserve: the groupers, the rules and the fee

Garajau is the reason divers fly to Madeira. The IFCN, the regional nature conservation institute, calls it the first exclusively marine reserve created in Portugal, in 1986, proposed by a group of divers. Operators sell it as a national park; the legal status is Partial Nature Reserve.

The reserve's special management plan gives 376 hectares and about 7 km of coastline between Ponta do Lazareto and Ponta da Oliveira, out to the 50 m isobath, created by Decreto Legislativo Regional 23/86/M.

Under that decree all fishing inside the reserve is banned, spearfishing included, along with running an engine inside the limits, taking marine animals or plants, and extracting sand. Four decades of that is why the fish behave the way they do. The emblematic species is the dusky grouper, Epinephelus marginatus, mero locally, and Visit Madeira says these groupers have been practically tamed by divers.

The terrain is simple and steep: rocky bottom to roughly 22 m (72 ft), then fine sand with some abrupt walls, and water clear enough to see beyond 20 m. Visit Madeira names seven traditional spots, Lazareto, Pináculo, Mamas, Praia do Garajau, Baía dos Porcos, Arena and Galo, served by five mooring buoys.

There is a fee, separate from the dive price, and the IFCN tells divers to book each protected area through the regional Simplifica portal. Portaria n.º 801/2025 of 10 December, amended by Portaria n.º 48/2026 of 13 February, charges 7,50 € per diver per day for a sunken-ship spot and the same for the Garajau, Desertas and Selvagens reserves, or 5,00 € where the operator holds an IFCN protocol. Madeira residents and under-12s are exempt. Fees change and the dive centre usually collects them, so ask what your price includes.

Madeira and Porto Santo dive sites: depth, level and what each one is for

Three ships were deliberately put on the bottom here as artificial reefs, and a fourth foundered in 1996 and became one. Government pages date them precisely while operator pages disagree about hull lengths, so the dates and locations below come from the IFCN and the depth ranges are each operator's own reading. For how these compare with the signature wrecks elsewhere, see our wreck diving destinations guide.

The two corvettes are the interesting pair. The IFCN puts the Afonso Cerqueira in the Cabo Girão Marine Natural Park, sunk in September 2018 east of Fajã do Rancho, about 400 m from the coast, lying at about 30 m with the bridge at about 15 m. Manta Diving Madeira gives the hull as 85 m and the date as 4 September 2018, while one operator directory places the same wreck off Caniçal on the east coast, so check the boat's destination rather than a listing. The General Pereira d'Eça off Porto Santo has its own date conflict: the IFCN says June 2016, the Porto Santo Biosphere Reserve site marks the sinking on 13 July 2016.

The Desertas Islands, the monk seals and the rules that actually apply

The Desertas are three uninhabited islands southeast of Madeira, Ilhéu Chão, Deserta Grande and Bugio, a nature reserve since 1995 and a special protection area since 1990. The diving rules there are written around the Mediterranean monk seals, not around divers.

The reserve is split in two, and the split decides where your boat goes. South of Ponta da Doca and Ponta da Fajã Grande the IFCN closes everything down to the 100 m isobath, with Doca bay the only authorised anchorage. North of those points the water is an Area of Partial Protection Type I, where diving is permitted.

Portaria n.º 370/2018 of 10 September sets the conditions. Without a member of the managing authority aboard, authorisation is limited to the partial protection area and Baía da Doca. The maximum is 10 scuba divers per dive site, and one support vessel per site unless a case is made in advance. Diving is prohibited in the presence of monk seals, and the authority can stop it whenever there is reason to. Authorisation runs through the Simplifica portal.

How many seals there are depends on who you read. Pires and colleagues, publishing the first demographic estimates for this population in Endangered Species Research in 2023, report abundance rising from 19 seals in 2013 to 27 in 2021. The Madeira and Desertas Islands IMMA factsheet quotes around 40 individuals from 2011 alongside around 25 from a later personal communication, so no single figure settles it. The 2023 paper explains the slow growth: a mean gross reproductive rate of 0.31 against 0.71 at Cabo Blanco in Mauritania, and first reproduction at 6 years against 3 there. The species is Red Listed as Endangered.

Book a Desertas day for the water and the walls, not for a seal encounter. If one turns up the dive is over, and that is the rule working.

What Atlantic conditions mean in practice: swell, surge and visibility

Madeira is an ocean island with a sheltered side. The Garajau management plan describes small yearly swings in air and sea temperature, dominant north and northeast winds, and occasional easterlies off Africa carrying Saharan sand. Azul Diving calls the south coast generally calm, with a handful of sites where advanced divers can expect current.

The north coast is a weather window rather than a plan. The IFCN says the Rocha do Navio reserve at Santana is of high interest for underwater activities despite the sea showing greater hydrodynamism, which is an official way of saying it is often too rough. Ponta de São Lourenço on the exposed eastern tip is listed at Advanced Open Water plus 50 logged dives and called weather dependent.

Visibility is the payoff. The management plan says the reserve's water allows observation beyond 20 m, Azul Diving says it is generally very good and can exceed 30 m, and Visit Madeira puts Porto Santo visibility at excellent down to around 40 m. Operator tables sit in the same band.

One practical point the brochures skip. Most diving is by boat from Funchal marina or Caniço, so a rolling deck and a back-roll entry are the normal start, while Praia do Garajau gives shore access to the reserve, which means cobbles and surge on a steep slope when any swell runs.

Madeira sea temperature by month, and the suit it implies

This is the number that makes Madeira a year-round destination. Ten-year monthly averages from seatemperature.info put the coolest water at 18.2°C (64.8°F) in March and the warmest at 23.8°C (74.8°F) in September, a swing of 5.6°C across the year. Three other sources bracket that series: the Garajau management plan says the sea reaches 24°C in summer and 17°C in winter, Visit Madeira gives 18-24°C, and Azul Diving says it never drops below 18°C in winter and reports no thermocline, so the surface reading is roughly what you get at 30 m.

Our wetsuit thickness guide starts a 5 mm at 20-23°C and a 7 mm or semi-dry at 10-19°C. Applied to the table below, a 5 mm covers June through December and January to May is 7 mm or semi-dry work, with a hood either way for two dives a day. Set that against the 11-17°C February range in our Mediterranean diving guide and the argument for an Atlantic winter trip is about five degrees wide.

When to go, and what the cetacean research says about the months

Visit Madeira says diving is possible all year round and the temperature series supports it. Azul Diving narrows the best period to June through November, where the six warmest monthly averages fall. The shoulder months buy a quieter reserve against a thicker suit. For how Madeira sits in a wider travel year, see our month-by-month destination guide.

Whales and dolphins are a separate boat trip, not something you plan a dive around. Fernandez and colleagues modelled 8,607 sightings of 10 species collected off Madeira between 2003 and 2018, published in Frontiers in Marine Science on 8 July 2021, against an archipelago total of roughly 30 recorded species. Bottlenose dolphin, with 2,733 sightings, showed almost no temporal variability, which is why operators sell it year round. Atlantic spotted dolphin, the most sighted at 3,040, peaked June to October, short-beaked common dolphin December to June, sperm whale June to November, Bryde's whale June to January and fin whale February to May, while short-finned pilot whale suitability was lower March to July.

One disagreement worth flagging: Azul Diving calls April and May sperm whale season, while the 2021 modelling puts sperm whale suitability rising June to November. If a sperm whale is the point of the trip, ask the operator for their own sighting log rather than a season label.

Safety: the chamber in Funchal, the DAN numbers and the Porto Santo problem

Madeira has a chamber, and you should still not assume a dive rota behind it. SESARAM, the regional health service, lists a hyperbaric medicine unit at Hospital Dr. Nélio Mendonça in Funchal, with a Grade I multiplace chamber inaugurated in April 2007 and a shared team of eight doctors, on the hospital line 291 705 600 extension 3947. What that page does not do is list diving accidents among the unit's indications.

DAN reports that hospitals long available to divers are restricting access or closing hyperbaric facilities as programmes shift toward outpatient wound care, and tells divers to call its hotline rather than a chamber directly. That number is +1-919-684-9111, staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, after local emergency medical services in a life-threatening case. DAN Europe lists +39 0642115685 with 24/7 assistance.

Porto Santo is the weak link. A suspected decompression illness there means a 2 hour 30 minute crossing or a flight before you reach the Funchal chamber, so check that your insurance covers evacuation and not only treatment. The flight home is the other trap, since two of the four wrecks are Porto Santo dives: read our guide on flying after diving before booking that leg on your last dive day.

Planning checklist for a Madeira dive trip

Work through this before you pay a deposit.

• Pick the month for water, not animals: June to November for the warmest water and calmest south coast, January to May for fewer boats and a 7 mm or semi-dry. Recheck your weighting for the extra neoprene.
• Check the entry bar per site: Garajau at Open Water and up, the corvettes at Advanced Open Water with 6 logged dives in the last 12 months, Ponta de São Lourenço at Advanced Open Water plus 50 logged dives.
• Budget the protected area fee separately: 7,50 € per diver per day for a reserve or a sunken-ship spot, 5,00 € through an operator with an IFCN protocol.
• For the Desertas, confirm the operator holds the Simplifica authorisation, that the group is 10 divers or fewer per site, and that everyone knows the dive ends if monk seals appear.
• Decide early whether Porto Santo is a separate few days. One sailing a day, roughly 2 hours 30 minutes each way, makes it a poor day trip.
• Buy insurance covering boat or air evacuation to the Funchal chamber, save both DAN numbers, and book the flight home with a surface interval you are happy with, especially after the Porto Santo wrecks at about 30 m.