Labadie Bay

Labadie Bay on Haiti's north coast is a deep natural harbour whose surrounding walls and reef systems remain in an exceptional state of preservation, partly because access from the shore side is logistically challenging and the cruise ship pier at the adjacent peninsula creates an unusual boundary between heavily visited beach and virtually untouched reef. Below the surface, the reef crest gives way to a wall that descends past 40 metres through overhangs crusted with encrusting sponges and wire coral, with green moray eels occupying every substantial crevice. Fish life on the shallower reef is spectacularly dense — the kind of biomass that Caribbean reefs had before intensive fishing began — with large parrotfish, horse-eye jacks in schools of hundreds, and sergeant majors defending nest sites across every square metre of hard substrate.