Grande Anse

A nursery, where the small ones look nothing like the big ones

Town : Les Anses d'Arlet

Grande Anse d’Arlet is both one of our sites and the meeting point for many others. The register of Martinique sites files it as Tombant de Grande Anse, with a note that says it all: Pouponnière, a nursery.

It is a multi-depth site, with a wall dropping towards twenty-five metres, and a biodiversity that made its reputation. It is dived from Level 1 to Level 3. Its immediate neighbour in the register is Pointe Lézarde, for which we have a page.

What a nursery is

A nursery is an area where the juveniles of many species spend their first months. It is not a geographical accident: the relief offers quantities of shelters too small for predators, which is exactly what a three-centimetre fish needs.

The young of most emblematic Caribbean species are reported here: angelfish, damselfish, triggerfish, parrotfish, boxfish, pufferfish.

A juvenile looks nothing like the adult

This is what most confuses divers starting out on identification. Among Caribbean angelfish, the juvenile wears yellow bars on a dark body, a pattern with nothing in common with the blue and yellow adult in the photograph above.

Some of these juveniles even hold a different job from their parents: they run a cleaning station and rid larger fish of their parasites, which earns them a welcome everywhere.

An identification book is therefore not enough. You have to know that the same fish has two lives and two costumes, and that the one in front of you may only be the first version.

What level you need here