Anse Chastanet Reef - Soufrière & the Pitons - Southwest Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

Anse Chastanet Reef is the dive most visitors to Saint Lucia will do without ever leaving their sandals behind - the island's premier shore dive, a protected fringing reef inside the Soufriere Marine Management Area that begins a few metres from one of the Caribbean's most photographed beaches. You swim through a gap in the reef and the whole Caribbean theatre opens: brain and pillar corals the size of armchairs, sea fans waving over sand channels, stoplight parrotfish grinding on the reef plate, and turtles - often several in one dive - cruising the shelf or resting in nooks. The shelf then falls away toward the South Piton wall, where the reef drops into deep blue far below recreational limits, which is exactly what makes this a site with a profile for everyone: the shallow garden for trainers and first dives, the 15-to-25-metre ledges for certified divers, and a wall descent for the advanced. The resident population of Caribbean reef octopus is reliable enough that guides check their favourite crevices like neighbours, and seahorses, frogfish and flamboyant cuttlefish turn the easy shore dive into a macro hunt for patient eyes. Because it needs no boat, no schedule and no guide, it is also the rare dive you can do twice in a week and still find something new crawling along the coral.