Lesleen M - Anse Cochon - Marine Reserve & Wreck Bay, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

The Lesleen M is the wreck that Saint Lucia built on purpose - a 50-metre cargo freighter deliberately sunk in 1986 in the sheltered waters of the Anse Cochon marine reserve, and now, four decades on, one of the most successful artificial reefs in the Caribbean and the island's single most dived site. She stands proud and upright on a sand flat in about 20 metres of water, so accessible and so furred with coral, soft growth and giant barrel sponges that she has ceased to read as a shipwreck and started to read as a living reef in the shape of a ship. That shallowness and integrity are the whole appeal: divers of nearly every level can swim the entire upright hull, rise over the deck and trace the superstructure without ever leaving comfortable recreational depth, and the marine life that has moved in is extraordinary - enormous, glittering shoals of sergeant majors and snapper standing off the steel, morays and octopus in the crevices, queen angelfish and parrotfish working the growth, southern stingrays resting on the sand apron and green turtles cruising past on the regular. She is dived as a swim-around, not a penetration; the holds are open to look at but not to enter on a standard recreational dive, and the crews are firm about it. What you get instead is a beautiful, intact, shallow, teeming wreck minutes from a beach - a genuine bucket-list dive that rewards being done twice.