Saline Point - Rodney Bay & Pigeon Island - Northern Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

Saline Point is the northern coast's gentle classroom - the island's most northerly dive site, a shallow, sheltered reef off the big northwest resorts that runs from almost-snorkelling depth down to about 18 metres and stays calm, warm and current-light on days when every more exposed site has given up. It is, in other words, close to an ideal beginner and training ground: an easy sand-and-coral landscape of low ledges and scattered bommies, thick with the accessible small life that keeps a nervous new diver delighted - scorpionfish draped and impossible-to-spot on the rock, morays poked from every hole, clouds of juvenile fish and queens over the coral, southern stingrays flattened on the open sand, and the occasional grazing turtle drifting past. Because the reef is so shallow and so protected, the light reaches all of it, which makes it a fine first-ever boat dive, a confidence-building refresher, and a superb macro-and-critter playground for anyone content to hover at five metres and look closely rather than descend a wall. Saline Point will never top a highlight reel; it does something arguably more valuable, turning more nervous first-time divers into happy certified ones than almost any other ground on the island.