Anse La Raye Wall - Anse La Raye & the Central West Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

The Anse La Raye Wall is widely rated the finest wall and drift dive on the island - the spot where the broad, sunlit coral shelf off the old smugglers' village simply stops, one moment you are swimming above brain coral and sea whip at eight metres and the next the rock falls away in a single, vertical curtain all the way into blue-black depth beyond twenty-five. Saint Lucia's volcanic personality shows here in its purest underwater form: an island built of lava edges and precipices, and the wall is where that geology meets the diving. The face is a hanging garden - sea whips and gorgonian forests waving from every ledge, colossal barrel sponges, curtains of feather duster worms and soft coral in every colour the Caribbean offers, with queen angelfish and grouper holding station in the relief and green turtles tracking along the wall like commuters. But the site's true signature is the drift: the crews set the boat, enter up-current and let the group swim the vertical garden on a gentle, moving ribbon of water, the wall dropping away to your right and the open blue shimmering beyond it. It is exhilarating, photogenic and just demanding enough to stay on every advanced diver's Saint Lucia shortlist - a dive that has the relief, the colour, the current and, on the right day, the rays and sharks that patrol the deep edge of the blue.