Saco do Capim

The cove is shallow from end to end — a minimum of 5 metres, a maximum of 12 — over a bottom of stones and sand. There is no wall and no drop-off to work, so the dive is a slow circuit of the rock and the sand between it, and the water inside sits still enough that the directory entry for the site compares it to a natural pool. Depth is never the limiting factor here; bottom time ends on gas rather than on the computer.

The other thing in the cove is the Granada, a vessel that struck Ilha do Arvoredo while it was adrift in a storm. It is not a wreck dive in the usual sense: the hull is dismantled and the pieces are scattered across the bottom, so what you find are sections of structure lying among the stones rather than anything to swim along or penetrate. No plan of the debris field has been published, and the sources do not record the ship's type or the year it was lost, so ask the crew which pieces are still worth finding.

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, after which operators confined their work to the south of Ilha do Arvoredo, which lies outside the reserve boundary. The site's own conditions come from divers' logbooks rather than a survey: the SSI listing averages 3 to 8 metres of visibility by month, and water between 19 and 25 °C.