Ile à Vache

Ile à Vache is a lush island 15 kilometres off the southwest coast of Haiti near Les Cayes, ringed by fringing reefs that see virtually no organised diving traffic and have consequently retained coral cover that larger Caribbean destinations lost decades ago. Hawksbill turtles forage openly along the reef crest as if unaware of human divers, a behavioural confidence that signals how rarely they are disturbed. The outer slopes descend through dense sea fan forests into sand channels where stingrays and garden eels share the substrate, and fish biomass across the reef is strikingly high for the Caribbean — a living benchmark of what these ecosystems can look like without fishing pressure.