Montão de Trigo Island

Montão de Trigo Island is a fine place for both free and scuba diving.[6] The best season for the activity is the summer, when the waters' temperature rises and visibility improves. Windsurf is another popular activity there.[6]

The local sea life is not very rich, but the island still offers caves and holes in its area where tourists can find pargos, badejos, grouper, lobsters, salemas and French angelfish, in couples or alone. Around the island, it's possible to sight penguins[3]and cetaceans such as Bryde's whales and dolphins.[7]

Almost all the island's inhabitants make a living out of artisanal fishing, since trawling is forbidden. In the past years, the fishes population have been decreasing, and by 2013, fishermen captured 1/6 of what they used to capture in 2005, due to the competition with bigger boats.[3] However, in 2018, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment limited the capture of mullets at the southern and southeastern coasts of Brazil, allowing for more of these fish to be found at the waters surrounding the island; in fact, by July of that year, eight tons of mullets were fished around the island.[8] Some families make some extra money by selling handicrafts.[3]

1612 map of part of the coastline of the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with the island's location, still called "Monte de Trigo" at the time (Wheat Pile). The island is at the beginning of the sharp turn taken by the coastline in the drawing.

For the last three centuries, the island has been permanently inhabited by caiçara families (around 52 in January 2012,[5] a number that remained unchanged in March 2013[3] and in January 2014;[2] the locals are known as "monteiros"[3]), who earned in early 2012 permission to occupy and explore the island, which still belongs to the government, but will no longer be subjected to real state projects. The permission is part of a program by the federal government which aims to benefit small villages with native people throughout the country. The permissions are called TAUS - Termo de Autorização de Uso Sustentável (Term of Authorization of Sustainable Use). Normally, they are given to river villages in Northern Brazil; this was the first time an island population received such benefit. With the TAUS, the locals can request improvements such as sewer, drinking water and housing programs.[5]

The local population lives with little infrastructure: there's no electricity, so they live on batteries. There's no sewer system and many houses have no toilets, so the locals urinate and defecate in external dry toilets or simply in the woods.[3] In 2012, no doctor had visited the island for two years.[9]

There's only one school which teaches up to the fourth grade[9] (fifth since 2010[3]), which has a bedroom for the teacher to spend the nights and only go back to the continent on the weekends.[3]

Since most marriages occur among the same family,[3][2] most inhabitants share the Oliveira surname.[9][2]