Abrolhos Archipelago

Seventy kilometres out from Caravelas the sea passes over a coral bank, and what is growing down there has the shape of mushrooms: single reef structures thirty metres tall, in their thousands, in a form found on this bank and on no other. From June the humpbacks come up over the top of them to give birth. Under the boat, a survey counted around thirteen hundred species, forty-five of them threatened.

Abrolhos was the first marine national park Brazil created, on 6 April 1983, and it covers 87,943 hectares in two separate pieces. The offshore piece takes in the Parcel dos Abrolhos and five volcanic islands, Redonda, Siriba, Guarita, Sueste and Santa Bárbara, the last of which sits outside the park under Navy jurisdiction and has held the Abrolhos lighthouse since 1861; the second piece protects part of the coastal reef arc between Alcobaça and Prado. Darwin came through here, and so did Vespucci. Reaching it takes between two and a half and five hours from Caravelas depending on the boat and the sea, only operators authorised by the park may make that crossing, and the trip is either a day run of roughly seven to six or a live-aboard of two to four days, on a ticket of twenty reais a day. Diving is done at set points with an authorised guide, over three wrecks and among the chapeirões, and there is a cabled night-dive trail on the Mau-Mau chapeirão near Santa Bárbara.