Cemitério das Ancoras

Two surface buoys mark the start. From the northernmost, descend to roughly 15-16 metres, where a large rock carries the "555" anchor, an informal landmark for the route. Continuing southwest, the dive passes anchors from different centuries and vessel types before reaching a vertical wall that drops to a sandy floor. Sources frame the depth here two ways: an 18m average deepening to a 35m maximum, or a 22m rock shelf easing to 32m sand with one anchor lying deeper still. Either way, the wall's base holds the site's signature feature, a large anchor resting upside-down near the maximum depth, corroborated across every tourism, catalog and operator source consulted. Along the route, white seabream, juvenile axillary seabream and salema move over the rock and sand, a resident dusky grouper or two holds near the wall, moray eels work the crevices, Almaco jacks pass through open water, and divers routinely encounter a stingray too.

Four centuries of losses, not one, built this anchor field: wrecks from different eras lie layered across the same stretch of seabed. The Underwater Archaeological Park wrapped around the site marks it as a heritage-protected zone rather than a single dive spot. Inside the same park, the neighbouring Lidador wreck is the easier counterpart: a shallow, beginner-friendly steamer at 7-11m, while this site carries the deeper, more varied route. Divers weighing Terceira against Pico or comparing it to Banco Dom Joao de Castro often name this anchor field, alongside the Lidador, among the island's headline dives.

The Bay of Angra recorded somewhere between 74 and 90 shipwrecks or sinkings between 1522 and 1996, the toll of the "vento carpinteiro," violent southerly gales that forced anchored ships to cut their lines and run for open water, abandoning any attempt to ride out the storm. What divers see today is the accumulated result: anchors from different eras and vessel types scattered along the rock shelf and wall. The Regional Government of the Azores formalised the site as an Underwater Archaeological Park under Regional Regulatory Decree 20/2005/A, signed 12 October 2005, authorised that December and opened to public diving in 2006, under the ongoing oversight of the Regional Directorate for Culture.

Deep Blue Azores, which runs dives to the site from Angra do Heroismo, and the official Azores tourism portal both recommend it for night diving and underwater photography; Arraia Divers, based in the same harbour, has also filmed here. The draw is the range of subjects at a single site: anchors spanning four centuries offer a mix of textures and compositions from encrusted iron to the cleaner lines of later losses, while the resident dusky grouper and the moray eels working the wall's crevices give divers a reliable macro-to-portrait pairing without hunting far from the route.

The site sits inside the port-control zone of Porto das Pipas, so nearby vessel movements are a live consideration; stay close to your buoy line on ascent and keep a lookout during surface intervals. The inverted anchor at the wall's base runs 32-35m depending on source, past Advanced Open Water's 30m ceiling: confirm your guide's training covers the deep leg before committing to the full route, and turn back at the rock shelf if you are not deep-qualified. Access is boat-only, a few minutes from Angra do Heroismo Harbour or about 45 minutes from Praia da Vitoria.