Todos os Santos Bay: Bahia's Treasure on Brazil's Atlantic Coast

Todos os Santos Bay, also called the Bay of All Saints, is one of Brazil's largest bays: a shallow, island-dotted inlet of about 1,230 km² (475 sq mi) on Bahia's coast. It wraps around the historic center of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil's first capital, and has served as a harbor, a slave port, an oil center, and a fishing ground in turn. Mangroves, coral reefs, and estuaries sustain fishing and shellfish-gathering communities, many of them Afro-Brazilian, while refineries, ports, and industry have left a legacy of pollution that those same communities now face.

Geography and Islands

The bay opens to the Atlantic between Salvador and Itaparica, its largest island, and extends inland to the Recôncavo lowlands. It averages about 9.8 m (32 ft) deep, with a maximum of around 70 m (230 ft), so much of it is shallow. Estimates of its surface area range from about 1,050 to 1,230 km² (405 to 475 sq mi), depending on how the shoreline is drawn. The islands are also counted differently: Bahia's environmental agency cites "more than 56", while other sources give 91, depending on whether small islets are included. Besides Itaparica, the best-known are Ilha dos Frades, Ilha de Maré, and Madre de Deus. Sixteen municipalities border the bay.

The bay has a rainy season from about March to August and a drier season from September to February, when saltier ocean water pushes farther in. Tidal currents and river inflow mix fresh and salt water through the bay's estuaries and tidal flats.

The Paraguaçu River and the Recôncavo

The most important river entering the bay is the Paraguaçu, which rises in the highlands of the Chapada Diamantina, flows about 500 km (310 mi) across Bahia and drains a basin of 54,877 km² (21,188 sq mi). Its estuary widens into the Baía do Iguape at the bay's head, an arm of the bay with extensive mangroves. The Subaé and Jaguaripe rivers also enter the bay, and the fertile lowlands around them, known as the Recôncavo, supported the sugar and tobacco plantations that made colonial Bahia rich.

Habitats and Wildlife

The bay's habitats include mangroves, mudflats, rocky shores, seagrass beds, and coral reefs. Mangroves line much of the shore, and typical Brazilian mangrove trees such as the red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), white mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa), and black mangrove (Avicennia schaueriana) form the forests that shelter fish and crabs. Seagrass (Halodule wrightii) and the mangrove oyster (Crassostrea rhizophorae) grow in the shallows, while brown algae such as Padina gymnospora grow on rocks.

Reefs off Salvador and around the islands are built by the brain coral genus Mussismilia, which is endemic to Brazil, and by the fire coral (Millepora alcicornis). They shelter cleaner fish such as the neon goby (Elacatinus figaro), the Brazilian basslet (Gramma brasiliensis), the French angelfish (Pomacanthus paru), the long-snout seahorse (Hippocampus reidi), and spiny lobsters (Panulirus laevicauda). The bay also nurses young sharks and rays: researchers have recorded pregnant females and newborns of the Brazilian sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon lalandii), the longnose stingray (Hypanus guttatus), and the Critically Endangered Brazilian guitarfish (Pseudobatos horkelii), among other species. Guiana dolphins (Sotalia guianensis) are common in the Paraguaçu estuary, and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), whose numbers have recovered in recent years, visit the waters off the bay's mouth. Wading birds such as the little blue heron (Egretta caerulea) feed in the mangroves.

Protected Areas

Two main protected areas cover the bay. The Baía de Todos os Santos Environmental Protection Area (APA), created by Bahia State Decree 7,595 of 5 June 1999, covers an estimated 800 km² (309 sq mi) of waters, islands and estuary in 13 municipalities. It aims to protect the remnants of the Atlantic Forest, mangroves, coral ecosystems, migratory birds, and the bay's waters, while regulating land use and fishing. The Baía do Iguape Marine Extractive Reserve, created in 2000 at the mouth of the Paraguaçu, covers about 10,074 ha (101 km², or 39 sq mi) in Cachoeira and Maragogipe. It was established so families can keep fishing and gathering shellfish sustainably, and in 2002 it included about 900 families (around 4,960 people).

History

Europeans named the bay on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1501, during an expedition traditionally associated with Amerigo Vespucci, although some accounts credit Gaspar de Lemos's voyage. Tomé de Sousa founded Salvador on its shore in 1549, and the city became the capital of colonial Brazil. The sugar economy of the Recôncavo drew enslaved Africans through the port, and by the early eighteenth century Salvador was one of the major slave ports of the Atlantic world. The Fort of Santo Antônio da Barra, built between 1583 and 1587 and now topped by the Barra Lighthouse, guarded the bay's entrance. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the warm, sheltered waters also attracted whalers hunting humpback whales that came to breed.

Oil, Ports and Industry

The bay's shores were the cradle of Brazil's oil industry. A well drilled at Lobato in Salvador in 1939 struck oil, and the Candeias well, completed in 1941, became the country's first commercial oil field. The Landulpho Alves Refinery (RLAM), begun in 1950 at Mataripe in São Francisco do Conde, processed Bahia's crude, and the Port of Aratu and the Aratu Industrial Center later joined it. In December 2021, Petrobras sold the refinery, renamed the Mataripe Refinery, to Abu Dhabi investor Mubadala Capital for about US$1.8 billion, and it is now run by Acelen. In April 2026, press reports citing Reuters said Petrobras had opened talks to buy it back, but the talks had not been officially confirmed.

Fishing Communities and Environmental Pressures

The bay supports fishers, shellfish gatherers (marisqueiras), and quilombola communities, descendants of escaped enslaved people. Ilha de Maré, an island of about 4,000 people with five recognized quilombola communities, lies close to the Port of Aratu and the Mataripe refinery. Studies of the bay have found heavy metals, including cadmium, copper, lead, and nickel, in oysters, seaweeds, and seagrasses near industrial areas, and a University of Bahia study reported elevated lead in the blood of children on Ilha de Maré. Dredging and port works have restricted fishing grounds, and about 53 ha (131 acres) of mangrove near the island were cleared for a port project in recent years before a court injunction intervened. In 2008, a ship working for Petrobras spilled about 5,000 liters (1,320 gal) of lubricant oil into the bay.

A different pressure comes from the invasive sun coral (Tubastraea), which arrived on ship hulls and offshore platforms and competes with native corals; Brazil's federal prosecutors have pursued legal action over its spread, and fishing families say it has reduced catches. On the restoration side, the Corais de Maré project, a partnership between a local organization, the Federal University of Bahia, and an island fishers' institute, has grown more than 3,000 colonies of fire coral on a 7,000 m² (75,000 sq ft) area off Ilha de Maré. Mangrove restoration and marine-litter mapping are also under way.

Culture and Tourism

The bay is also home to much of Bahia's Afro-Brazilian culture. Salvador's historic center, the Pelourinho, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and each February the city celebrates Iemanjá, the Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea, with offerings carried to the water. Itaparica draws beachgoers, and the bay's reefs and sheltered waters support sailing, diving, and ecotourism. The wider setting is described in The Natural Landscape of Brazil.

Conclusion

Todos os Santos Bay combines a rich natural system of mangroves, reefs, and estuaries with some of Brazil's oldest and most intense human use. How well it is managed will determine whether its fisheries, wildlife, and traditional communities can survive alongside the refinery, ports, and growing city on its shores.