I’m going to share my personal experience about Baixa do Ambrosio, but before starting, these are just subjective opinions !
For me this place is a bit to commercialized even if it is situated in a marine reserve which allows only one boat at a time at the dive site.
In fact this dive consists of hanging attached to a rope in the blue while waiting for whatever pelagic species will come. This type of dive can be really enjoyable if there are not 15 divers attached to this rope at the same time between 10 and 20 meters deep. This amount of divers produces so many bubbles that your visibility is reduced and you have the impression of being in a bottle of sparkling water or even champagne…
These are not the most incredible pictures I’ve taken but they allow you to understand how many divers there were and the inconvenience it can produce.
Despite the not very pleasant moment spent in the water, I noticed that this type of diving has an impact on mobulas’ behaviour.
I was one of the first divers to get into the water and the last to exit it. As I entered it, or before leaving it, it was simply magical. Being only 3 divers or less, so close to these mesmerizing creatures will remain as one of my favourite diving experience. We saw mobulas, amberjacks, tunas, schools of fish, and others …
However, when the rest of the group got in, they just swam away from us and went down into the deep waters. Maybe the sound made by the bubbles and the amount of people in the water scared them. Additionally, to please their clients, the dive instructors went to the top of sea mount to make noise that would scare the rays and make them reach the surface so that we could look at them. But as soon as they would see us, they would just swim away as they did before. While diving I just had the feeling of disturbing the rays by perturbing them with the sound of the bubbles, and therefore having a significant destructive impact on this ecosystem and these threatened animals, just for “fun”.
I am aware that having “only” 15 people at the same spot is not considered as a lot of divers compared to what is done in the rest of the world, but to offer a more satisfying and rewarding experience to their clients, these clubs should take way less divers with them. To compensate this, they could surcharge their clients by promoting first of all a better dive experience closer to these animals, and also a more sustainable and respectful approach for the pelagic species.
Please make your own research to choose the diving club that suits you and that has the most respectful behaviour regarding the underwater ecosystems !
Another reminder that this is only MY personal point of view about MY experience with a diving club that I won’t name.
Lucas Vahlas' Blog 