In addition to El Tancón, the cave of Los Camarones, in Arona, is also known for its lethality. It is located 30 meters deep and about 700 from the coast of El Palm-Mar. It does not have air bubbles where it can breathe, although its worst trap is hidden in the sediments that rest at the bottom, a real time bomb in that the sudden movement of a fish alerted by flashlights or the improper flapping of divers can cause a cloud of mud that kills visibility for hours.
In 1975, this cloudiness of the water trapped Juan José Benítez, 29, from Tenerife, Spain and the Canary Islands diving champion, and Francoise de Roubaix, 36, a collaborator of Commander Cousteau and a well-known French musical composer. Both were imprisoned inside the volcanic labyrinth when they made a photographic report.
Nine years later, two German divers, Henry Sarpentin, 38, an instructor for a diving club in Playa de Las Américas, and one of his students, Jens Steiner, 17, were also trapped in the deadly throat when they participated, together to a dozen young people, in an immersion in the surroundings of the grotto.
At the end of the exercise and noticing the absence of one of the participants, the instructor feared the worst and came to his rescue inside the cave in a desperate fight against the clock for the depleted compressed air reserves after the previous incursion . None returned to the zodiac that awaited them on the surface.
Members of the Mundo del Silencio Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense and protection of the marine environment, placed on January 1 an iron cross measuring one meter high and weighing 80 kilos at the entrance of the cave. in memory of the victims and to warn of the risk within. Near the entrance to Los Camarones there is also a statue of the Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of sailors and fishermen, and the figure of a dolphin in homage to Jacques Cousteau placed on the centenary of his birth.
