Turtle Bay

On the southern tip of Sal Island, a sheltered bay known locally as Baía das Tartarugas serves double duty as a loggerhead turtle nesting beach above the waterline and a cleaning and feeding station below it. Divers enter the water and almost immediately encounter loggerhead turtles queued at cleaning stations where juvenile fish pick parasites from their shells and flippers — encounters so relaxed and prolonged that photographers routinely run low on memory cards before their air. The sandy bottom holds garden eels in large colonies alongside burrowing stingrays, and the volcanic rock fringe shelters lionfish, juvenile turtles, and hawksbill turtles in smaller numbers. The combination of reliable turtle encounters at all skill levels with genuinely accessible conditions — maximum 15 metres, calm most of the year — makes this the best entry dive on Sal Island and one of the most reliably joyful dives anywhere in the Atlantic.