La Digue Anse Patates

La Passe · La Digue · Seychelles

La Digue Anse Patates takes the Seychelles' signature landscape feature, those iconic rounded granite boulders, and submerges them in warm Indian Ocean water teeming with tropical marine life. The result is an underwater environment unlike anything else in the diving world: ancient grey-pink granite formations the size of delivery trucks creating passages, overhangs, and swim-throughs, all covered in a living carpet of coral, sponge, and algae that supports a thriving reef community. The site sits off the northern tip of La Digue, the Seychelles' third largest island and arguably its most beautiful. The boat ride from La Passe took ten minutes, passing the granite coastline that has graced a thousand travel photographs. Below the waterline, those same boulders continue, tumbled and stacked by geological forces 750 million years ago when these granites formed as part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. I dropped into 22-degree visibility water and descended along the largest boulder, its surface textured with hard coral colonies and encrusting sponges in orange and purple. At 8 metres, a gap between two boulders created a natural swim-through wide enough for two divers abreast. On the other side, a hawksbill turtle was feeding on a sponge growing from the granite face, methodically tearing chunks with its beak-like mouth. It glanced at me without concern and continued eating. The granite formations create a complex three-dimensional habitat at modest depths. Most of the diving occurs between 6 and 16 metres, with the boulders rising from a sandy floor at 18 to 20 metres. Under overhangs, scorpionfish sit motionless in the shadows. Octopuses squeeze into crevices between boulders. Moray eels emerge from holes in the granite, their mouths opening and closing rhythmically. Schools of surgeonfish and fusiliers stream between the formations, while pairs of butterflyfish and angelfish patrol territorial sections of the reef. Batfish hang in loose groups under the larger overhangs, their flat bodies turning sideways to present their dramatic disc-shaped profiles. The shallow sections offer perfect safety stop conditions with excellent light penetrating to the granite surfaces, illuminating the colours of the living cover. Looking up from 5 metres, the silhouettes of the boulders against the bright surface create a dramatic graphic composition that underwater photographers find irresistible.