Cipreia Porto Santo

Cipreia Dive Club Porto Santo operates from inside the Vila Baleira Resort on the island's south coast, one of four bases the Cipreia Dive Club group runs across Portugal alongside its mainland and Madeira locations. It is registered with Portugal's tourism-animation authority under RNAAT No. 41/2011 and holds SSI Instructor Training Center status, plus PADI Dive Centre recognition. It advertises itself, alongside the group, as an SSI Diamond Center, while SSI's own directory lists this branch's level as Instructor Training Center.

The branch's own dive list centres on two wrecks inside the same protected area: the Madeirense, a 1962 cargo-passenger ship deliberately sunk in October 2000 and lying at an average of 33 metres on sand, and the Corveta General Pereira d'Eça, a Portuguese Navy corvette scuttled in 2016 on a rocky-sandy bottom between 15 and 30 metres. Diving either wreck requires Advanced Open Water. A standard guided boat dive to Porto Santo's other sites is open to Open Water divers, with a refresher required for anyone who has not dived in the past 12 months.

Trips run from a single boat, a 7.5-metre RIB named Go Dive with a 250 hp Honda outboard, room for 14 divers and one side ladder. Base facilities inside the resort include changing rooms with hot showers, cafeteria access, outdoor equipment-setup tables and a wash-and-dry area for gear, plus secure storage between dives.

For non-certified visitors, the branch runs a shallow Try Scuba Diving programme: an ocean session capped at five metres of training depth, or a pool-based introduction at the base inside the resort. The wider Cipreia Dive Club group states it has operated since 1992; its sister locations are in Sesimbra near Lisbon and two further bases on Madeira, in Funchal and Reis Magos.

Reviewers consistently praise attentive, safety-first instruction, and fish abundance on the two wrecks is the theme that recurs most: divers repeatedly describe unusually large numbers of big fish holding around both hulls. Praise is spread across a wide roster of staff named individually by many different reviewers, not concentrated on one or two people, a pattern that points to consistent service across the team instead of one standout guide. One reviewer specifically credits the shop with accommodating sidemount configuration, uncommon for an operator in Portugal, including appropriate tank supply and boat handling for it. No safety incident or equipment complaint appears in the reviews on record for this branch.