Snorkelling Ste Anne Marine Park

The park is right there. From the eastern side of Mahé you can see the islands it is built around, Ste Anne, Cerf, Moyenne, Round and Long, sitting in water that changes colour every few hundred metres. It was protected in the early 1970s, one of the first marine parks in the Indian Ocean, and the protection is the reason there is anything left to look at.

Boats go out from the Victoria side and the crossings are short, which is the practical appeal: this is a morning, not a day. You are handed a mask, someone checks it seals, and then you are over the side into water that is warm enough to stay in until your fingers wrinkle.

What is down there is shallow and busy. Parrotfish grinding at the coral, sergeant majors in clouds thick enough to swim through, wrasse and snapper working the edges of the granite. Over the seagrass, turtles feed with the unbothered slowness of animals that know nothing here is going to chase them. Rays lift off the sand and put themselves down again a few metres on.

The coral is the honest part of the story. This reef has been through bleaching, and stretches of it are rubble now with new growth coming back in patches. Nobody arriving expecting a coral garden will get one. What you get instead is a lot of fish in very clear water very close to the surface, which for a first mask, or for a child’s first mask, is a better introduction than anything deeper.

There is also a whole day of it. The reef safari sails out among the inner islands on a catamaran, puts you in a semi-submersible to watch the fish through the hull without getting wet, then into the water for a snorkel over the reef. Lunch comes with music, and in the afternoon you go ashore on Moyenne, where giant tortoises wander loose among old ruins and graves said to be pirates’. A cocktail and a slow loop of the park bring you back to Mahé.

Take a rash vest rather than more sunblock; you will be face-down for longer than you plan. And go on a calm morning if you can pick your day, because the visibility here belongs to the wind. It sits easily beside a Mahé beach week and beside the islands you would move on to afterwards.

Good to know

• The marine park charges an entry fee separately from the boat fare, generally collected on the water. We confirm the current amount when we quote.
• Masks, fins and vests are usually provided, but a mask that fits your own face is worth carrying. Bring it if you have one.
• A rash vest beats sunblock for a long float. Your back is the part that burns.
• Reef-safe sunblock only, and nothing standing on the coral. It is a park with rules and they exist for a reason.
• Visibility follows the wind and the tide. A calm morning is a different day from a blowy one.
• Glass-bottom boats and the semi-submersible work the same sites for anyone staying dry. Landings on Moyenne can be wet, so bring a dry bag, and expect bare feet on board.