La Coucoune

A sand flat planted with eels, then a wall to fifty metres

Town : Le Prêcheur

La Coucoune is dived from Le Prêcheur, at the far north of the Caribbean coast. It is one of our leading sites.

The register of Martinique sites files it under three names at once: Pointe Lamare, La Coucoune, and Le Tombant de Barrère. It is the same place. We call it La Coucoune, others call it Pointe Lamare, and both are right.

The dive starts around twelve metres on a plateau, follows a slope covered in gorgonian colonies, feather duster worms and sponges, and ends on a wall dropping towards fifty metres. Spotted eagle rays are reported here.

Garden eels, and how to actually see them

The plateau carries a sand dune, and that dune is inhabited. Garden eels live there in a colony, standing upright, body in a burrow and head out, picking plankton from the passing current.

From a distance you think you are looking at swaying grass. It is a field of animals.

The trouble is that they see you coming. As you approach, each one withdraws into its hole, and the colony vanishes in front of you as though it had never been there. Plenty of divers leave without having seen them, convinced there was nothing to see.

The only method that works is to stop. You settle at a distance, you stay still, you wait a minute or two. They come back out one by one, and the field starts swaying again. It is a lesson that serves you everywhere else underwater.

What level you need here