hey all- marina's son here
We dove with Dive Fair Helen this time, as opposed to Scuba St Lucia.
Most of the resorts will try and send you to Dive Fair Helen.
The boat is big, which is nice, but the trip will be long, so even if you are not normally prone to seasickness, get some medication!
Our resort was Wyhndam (sp?) and we had to make three or four different pick ups, thus bringing the total time on deck to about an hour, hour and a half. I am not usually too bad on boats, but i was "feedin the fishies", as per the russian saying.
The area was tremendously over fished
however, it seemed like there was very little pollution and such, so, while most of the fish we saw were in the fish market downtown, there were many magnificent corals and sponges, which i understand are much more delicate and respond more to pollution and temprature (sp) change. Keep an eye out for the flourescent purple sponges, they are really cool.
Supposedly, there are sea horses in St Lucia, and some of the people on boat claimed to have seen them, but we had no luck.(maybe it was because we were the second group at the wreck, and there were about twenty of us on one site
) Just FYI the seahorses are mostly spotted around the wreck which is about 65' down.
Unfortunately, the dive fair helen and whyndham dive program seems to be disorganized, and it seems like half of the people do not know what is going on. For example, on our last day of diving, half of the group was told that the bus was leaving at twenty two, and half was told that the bus was leaving twenty after. the bus left at half past, leaving us and our half of our group staying on the bus for fifty minutes
overall, scuba diving at st lucia was different because there were less fish, more sponges and corals, and the boat ride was often difficult.
hope this helps if anybody travels to st lucia
talk to you all next year
MK