Diving in Les Saintes

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sat 19 Nov 2011 21:44
Over the last two days we have been diving here.  When we set off for the first dive we did not really know what to expect to see, and we were surprised that the first dive site was going to be a maximum of 14m.  The dive brief was totally in French as everyone else on the boat is French and John and I were told to basically swim round the rock keeping the reef on our right hand shoulder.  
The site was called Ti Pate, and was small island/large rock off the northern side of Terre D'en Bas.  What an amazing dive!!  The colours were absolutely stunning - each colour was so bright and perfect, it almost looked like a painting rather than the ocean floor.  There was also a huge amount of fish, eels, and other sea life which I can't name as all the books here are, again, in French.  As we swam around we seemed to be constantly pointing out something to each other.  The water here is also unbelievably clear and the rain showers which often cause visibility to be less, had no effect at all.
The second dive was called Le Vierge, which translates as The Virgin.  This is off the side of La Cloche, a small uninhabited island, and was given this name because a pillar of rock was said to resemble the Virgin Mary - this likeness was somewhat diminished about 6 years ago though when a rogue wave knocked her head off!! This dive was again shallow but beautiful. We swam round lots of small reefs and through a couple of canyons as well. In one canyon the colours were fabulous - I have never seen so many shades of red! The sea life was also abundant, with various eels, porcupine fish, and enormous angel fish.  John also spotted a large lobster colony with about 6 or 7 large lobsters. 


 The caribbean lobsters are different from the ones at home in that they have no claws, just long spiny antenna.

 We also spotted a free swimming turtle. 

  One of the types of eel we saw.

  An angel fish - gorgeous creatures!!

This afternoon, for a bit of change we went snorkelling off the reef on Ile de Cabrit, another uninhabited island - we are turning into real water babies!  Again there were loads of fish and eels swimming around us, and lots of near perfect conch shells - although none quite good enough to take home.  It is so easy to see the fish here you don't even need to dive - but it is great fun and definitely to be recommended.