Anse Cochon Reef - Anse Cochon - Marine Reserve & Wreck Bay, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

Anse Cochon Reef is the shallow partner to its famous wreck neighbour - a protected coral garden inside the marine reserve bay on the northwest coast, running no deeper than 15 metres and glowing with the kind of big, bold, unbothered reef life that a no-take zone grows when it is left alone. Where the Lesleen M pulls the crowds, this is the site the reserve was really built for: healthy brain corals and pillar sponges over a sand-and-rock bottom, low bommies draped in growth, and a fish population so relaxed and abundant that green turtles cruise the garden for the regular graze, large queen and stoplight parrotfish grind loud clouds of sand off the coral, morays poke from every hole, and southern stingrays lie flattened on the open sand at the reef's edge. Because the bay is sheltered and shallow, the reef is calm, warm and clear in almost any condition - a reliable easy dive, a training and refresher favourite, and a superb snorkelling ground for the non-divers in a group. It is rarely dived alone; most crews pair it with the wreck in the same morning, giving divers a coral-garden-and-wreck contrast in a couple of minutes of boating. Quiet, colourful and completely at ease, the Anse Cochon reef is the reserve's living proof that protection works.