Virgin Cove - Anse Cochon - Marine Reserve & Wreck Bay, Saint Lucia

Site Overview

Virgin Cove is the prettiest, quietest corner of the Anse Cochon marine reserve - a sheltered cove on the bay's northern edge where the reef curves into a low semicircular wall, clothed in brain corals, sponges and soft growth, around a calm inner sanctuary that the local turtles have clearly claimed as their own grazing and resting ground. It is a small, beautiful, easy dive: you sink beside the sand and follow the arc of the wall up through a garden of big coral heads, working at recreational depth between 5 and 18 metres, with green and hawksbill turtles a genuinely regular sight nosing along the reef or parked in the sheltered shallows, spiny lobster stacked in the wall's holes, spider crabs and morays in the crevices, and clouds of angelfish, grunts and parrotfish over the growth. Because the cove is protected and shallow, the water is usually flat, clear and warm, and the whole site has the feel of a private, tended garden at the back of the reserve. Divers rarely plan Virgin Cove as the headline - the wreck and the south-coast walls take that role - but almost everyone who dives it rates it the reserve's loveliest surprise, and it makes the perfect calm, scenic third dive of a morning that began with a coral-crusted freighter.