Cades Reef

Cades Reef is Antigua's premier marine protected area and the island's most celebrated dive site — a large submerged reef system off the southwest coast of Antigua that has been protected since 1973 and in the ensuing decades has become a showcase for what Caribbean reef conservation can achieve. The reef extends for several kilometres in a series of distinct dive sites, and the combination of protection, healthy coral, and exceptional fish life makes Cades Reef the first recommendation of every dive operator on Antigua for visitors seeking the island's best underwater experience. The protection status at Cades Reef has produced results that are visible from the first moments underwater. Fish that on unprotected reefs flush away at the approach of divers move calmly through the coral here, going about their feeding and social routines with the unconcerned confidence of animals that have not been persecuted. Large Nassau grouper — a species that has been hunted to functionally extinct on many Caribbean reefs — are present at Cades in numbers that were characteristic of the historic Caribbean reef before commercial fishing depleted populations across the region. These large, slow-maturing fish are ambassadors for what the reef can be when given adequate protection. The coral formations at Cades Reef are extensive and varied — the system covers enough depth range to include the shallow Acropora-dominated upper zones, the mid-depth reef community of brain and star corals, and the deeper sections where sea fans and black coral trees establish below the wave influence. Coral cover here is among the highest on any Antiguan reef, and the reef's complexity creates the habitat diversity that supports the exceptional species richness for which Cades is known. For beginner divers, the inner sections of Cades Reef provide calm, shallow diving with extraordinary marine life in conditions that are as close to ideal as Caribbean diving gets. The outer reef sections are more exposed and current-affected, extending the site's appeal to more experienced divers. The overall effect of a day diving Cades Reef is of having encountered the Caribbean as it was — and as it can be again, given adequate will and protection.