The Staircase - Soufrière & the Pitons - Southwest Coast, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

The Staircase is the south coast's most gently beautiful reef - an untouched terraced wall that descends from a few metres under the surface in a series of broad coral steps, each one a shelf of healthy growth, sea fans and sponge gardens stacked above the next, until the reef eases down to about 25 metres and the whole staircase reads as a single layered composition in blue and colour. It is a site built for going slow: rather than dropping to a bottom and looking up, you climb down step by step, lingering on each nursery shelf where juvenile fish, angelfish and parrotfish work the coral, before sliding to the next. Turtles of every size use the shallow shelves to graze and rest, and it is common to work down one terrace and find a green turtle parked there, then another hunched over the coral two steps below. Because the reef is sheltered inside the marine area and its profile is a stair rather than a sheer drop, it is one of the friendliest and most reliable dives on the southwest coast - the first boat dive of a trip, the gentle second after a big wall, and a place where a nervous newer diver can watch the reef descend alongside them instead of yawning away below. Pristine, photogenic and endlessly walkable, the Staircase is exactly what it sounds like: an easy way down into a very fine reef.