Cape Verde

Cabo Verde

Cape Verde is a volcanic archipelago off West Africa where organized scuba diving is concentrated on four islands: Sal (around Santa Maria), Boa Vista (around Sal Rei), Santiago (around Tarrafal) and São Vicente (around Mindelo/Praia do Vulcão on neighbouring Santo Antão).

Diving in Cape Verde is documented on four of the archipelago's ten islands. On Sal, dive centres operate out of Santa Maria, with roughly 18 named sites including cave, tunnel and wreck formations (capeverde.com, diveincaboverde.com, taucher.net). On Boa Vista, diving is based at Sal Rei/Estoril beach, with around 24 named reef and wreck sites documented by Diving Center Riamar. On Santiago, dive sites are concentrated around Tarrafal (capeverde.com, taucher.net). São Vicente/Mindelo has volcanic walls, pinnacles and caves with strong currents and migratory pelagics, including the wreck of the freighter Paul (sunk 1986); a further site on neighbouring Santo Antão (Praia do Vulcão) is dived as part of the Mindelo operator network. No verifiable diving activity was found for the islands of Maio and Fogo. The coordinate given here marks the national capital, Praia, as a general locator for the archipelago as a whole; it is not a dive-site coordinate.