Daini Koyomaru - Rodney Bay & Pigeon Island - Northern Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

The Daini Koyomaru is the north coast's big one - a 75-metre Japanese dredger deliberately sunk in 1996 and now lying upside down on the seabed off Rodney Bay, her great steel keel arching over the sand like a cathedral roof and her hull furred with thirty years of coral, sponge and encrusting life. She is the deepest and most demanding of the island's two famous wrecks, and the contrast with the shallow, upright, novice-friendly Lesleen M is the whole point of a northern wreck day: where the Lesleen M welcomes everyone, the Koyomaru asks for an advanced card, a nitrox tank and the buoyancy discipline to swim a 33-metre hull without blowing your no-deco budget. The upside-down posture makes her uncanny and photogenic - you glide beneath the exposed keel, rise past the inverted superstructure and the old dredging gear now wearing gardens of soft coral, and peer into the black gaps where the holds have become permanent real estate for barracuda, morays, groupers and enormous shoals of snapper and yellowtail. Turtles cruise the sand skirt and a great barracuda or two stand permanent guard off the structure. The standard offering is a full exterior tour; the holds are open to look at but penetration is a separate technical discipline the operators keep firmly off the recreational menu. For advanced divers with the training, the Daini Koyomaru is one of the finest deep-wreck dives in the eastern Caribbean.