Saco do Engenho

The cove bottoms out at 15 metres and shallows to 6, all of it stones and sand, so the dive is worked as a slow traverse of the rock rather than as a descent to anything. The cave is the reason to come: it opens into two chambers, and the groupers inside are large, which is what divers along this coast tend to notice first. Light falls away past the entrance, so carry a torch.

Outside the cave the ground opens into a plot that draws pelagic fish, and that part of the dive is spent waiting rather than searching — hold position on the rock, keep an eye on the open water, and let whatever is moving through come past. Which species those are is not published for this site, so the crew's briefing will tell you more than any directory entry about what has been passing lately.

Access is by boat, and only to the part of the island outside the reserve. Recreational diving inside the Reserva Biológica Marinha do Arvoredo was closed in 2000 under Brazil's SNUC protected-areas law, and operators moved their diving to the south of Ilha do Arvoredo, which lies outside the reserve boundary. Conditions here come from divers' logbooks rather than a survey: the SSI listing averages 4 to 10 metres of visibility by month, and water between 18 and 25 °C.