Rebocador Marte

The Marte began life under the name Farm; in 1947 it was bought by Wilson, Sons and renamed Lady Rosemary, and in 1966 it became the Marte, a tug in the port of Recife. At the end of its working life, it was bought in Recife in 1997 by the owner of Hotel Intermares, now Serrambi Resort, to become an artificial reef and dive site for the hotel. Stripped of its engines and winches, it left Recife before dawn towed by two fishing boats; at the chosen spot, the bottom valves were opened and, as it was slow to sink, holes were cut with a torch in the stern hold, and even so it took a few hours to go down. The tug is part of the artificial wreck program that the Serrambi resort created in the late 1990s, and the following year the same team sank the Gonçalo Coelho.

On one dive trip, the hotel team drifted away from the Marte and found another wreck, which became known as the Galeão de Serrambi. The funnel stood upright until 2008 and today only the smoke duct remains; the awning frame over the deck also collapsed from 2008 onward.

Guarded by hotel staff for a few years, the wreck gathered abundant marine life and was colonized by large fish, which were later killed by spearfishers. Turtles, rays, moray eels and assorted schools of fish are seen regularly, the wreck also hosts dentões and ciobas, and large barracudas frequent the wreckage. A scientific survey identified 67 fish species on the wreck. In a survey of divers on the Ipojuca coast, the Marte tied with the Gonçalo Coelho as the site most often cited for sea turtle sightings. On the Ipojuca coast, divers report four species of sea turtle, with the hawksbill turtle the most frequently mentioned. In Serrambi, the best months for scuba diving tend to run from October to April.