Piton Wall - Soufrière & the Pitons - Southwest Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

Piton Wall is the pure vertical dive of the south coast - a sheer volcanic face dropping straight off the base of the Pitons into a blue so deep it reads as another element, with a coral crest at six metres and then nothing below but wall, water and the occasional cruising turtle or ray. This is the dive for the advanced team who came for the drama of the drop: a few strokes down the face and the reef is a bright ribbon above you, the sea whips and gorgonians on the ledges shrink to gardens, and the giant barrel sponges at 25 and 30 metres sit on the wall like sentries over an abyss. The coral band that makes the dive worth doing lives at exactly the depth where air becomes a liability, which is why the operators ask for nitrox and the crews brief you out of your fear of the downward glance. Along the face are cracks and chimneys furred in black and soft coral, groupers holding in the current, clouds of chromis off the crest, and a genuine possibility of reef shark and eagle ray drifting the blue beyond the wall. It is the most exposed and most demanding of the Piton dives - no bowl, no shelter, no shallow retreat - and for divers with the card, the gas and the nerve, it is the one that makes the other wall dives on the island look like warm-ups.