Sainte Anne Marine National Park is the Seychelles' great window onto the underwater world closest to the capital: a group of six granite islands and their turquoise waters, protected since 1973 as the first marine park in the Indian Ocean, just a short boat ride from Victoria's harbour. Coral reefs, seagrass meadows, turtles and shoals of colourful fish make this corner a magnet for snorkelling and boat trips.
Its big advantage is how easy it is to reach: 15-25 minutes by boat from Victoria takes you to a small archipelago with crystal-clear water and abundant marine life. Day trips combine stops to swim over the corals, glass-bottom boat rides to see the fish without getting wet, and lunch on islands such as Cerf. Some of the six islands have exclusive resorts. Another, tiny Moyenne, holds a fascinating story of treasure and of a man who bought his own island.
This guide takes a practical look at Sainte Anne Marine Park: what a day trip includes, where the best snorkelling is, which islands you can visit, how much the park fee costs and how to choose an operator. If you want to discover the corals and turtles of the Seychelles without straying far from Victoria, this park is the perfect sea getaway, and it suits the whole family.
The islands of Sainte Anne Marine Park were the site of the first French settlement in the Seychelles: in 1770, the first settlers landed on Sainte Anne island itself to found the colony. Over the centuries, these islands near Victoria had plantations, a whaling station and even a prison, and tiny Moyenne became famous for legends of pirate treasure. In 1973, recognising the richness of their reefs, the Seychelles protected them as the first marine national park in the Indian Ocean. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The largest island and the heart of the country: this is where France set its Stone of Possession in 1756, where Victoria grew into Africa's smallest capital, and where the Morne Seychellois, the archipelago's highest peak, rises.
Read the history of Mahé and Victoria →They depart from Praslin, 42 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The islands that today make up the Sainte Anne Marine Park hold a place of honour in the history of Seychelles: this is where it all began. In 1770, a French expedition sent from Isle de France (present-day Mauritius) landed on Sainte Anne, the largest island in the group, to found the archipelago's first permanent settlement. The ship that brought those first settlers (a handful of French colonists, enslaved Africans and a few Indians) was called 'Le Thélémaque'. The aim was to take real possession of islands that France had claimed years earlier.
The first attempt at colonisation, based on growing spices and food crops, was a struggle because of pests, isolation and internal conflict. Soon the centre of the colony moved to neighbouring Mahé, where L'Établissement, the future Victoria, was founded in 1778. But the group of islands facing the new capital (Sainte Anne, Cerf, Round, Long, Moyenne and Cachée) was tied to the life of the colony from the start because it lay so close to the harbour.
Cerf Island takes its name from another ship in that founding expedition, 'Le Cerf', and the islands saw the birth of Seychellois Creole society. Over time, each one took on its own role: coconut plantations, a station for processing whale oil, and various uses linked to the colonial administration. In a way, those granite islands off Victoria were the stage for the founding act of Seychelles as an inhabited country.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, the islands off Victoria were put to very different uses that reflect the history of the colony. For a time, Sainte Anne had a whaling station. In those decades whales were hunted in Seychelles waters and their oil was processed, something unthinkable today but common in the Indian Ocean back then. Over the years the island was also home to a school and various other facilities.
Round Island (Île Ronde) had a darker fate: for years it was a leper colony, a place where people with leprosy were isolated from the population of Mahé. Nearby Long Island (Île Longue), for its part, served as the prison of Seychelles for much of the 20th century, where the country's inmates served their sentences. Whaling, leprosy, prison: these uses show how the islands, so close to the capital yet cut off by the sea, were used for activities people wanted kept out of the way.
Meanwhile, tiny Moyenne and Cachée stayed almost abandoned, overgrown with scrub and wrapped in legends of pirates and buried treasure. Victoria's fishermen kept working the waters around the whole group, which were rich in coral and fish. Nobody yet imagined that this small archipelago, with its history of plantations, patients and prisoners, would end up as an internationally recognised conservation treasure.
In the early 1970s, Seychelles began to realise how exceptional its marine life was, just as tourism was taking off after the international airport opened in 1971. The coral reefs, seagrass meadows and wildlife in the waters off Victoria were a treasure that had to be protected from overfishing and uncontrolled development. So in 1973 the Sainte Anne Marine National Park was created, the first marine park in the Indian Ocean and one of the first in the world.
The designation protected the six islands and, above all, the waters around them. It banned fishing and regulated activities to conserve the coral ecosystems. It was a visionary decision for its time, and it foreshadowed the commitment to conservation that would make Seychelles a world reference: today the country protects huge stretches of ocean and has been a pioneer in creating large marine protected areas. Sainte Anne was the first step on that path.
The park quickly became a tourist destination, thanks to how close it is to Victoria and how easy it is to go snorkelling and take boat trips there. At the same time, its reefs faced the global challenges of climate change. The coral bleaching events of 1998 and 2016, caused by warming seas, damaged some of the corals, which are recovering slowly. The park is managed by the Seychelles parks authorities, who try to balance tourism with protecting a fragile and valuable ecosystem.
Inside the park, tiny Moyenne Island is the setting for one of the most heart-warming stories in Seychelles. In 1962, British journalist Brendon Grimshaw bought this abandoned, overgrown little island for about 8,000 pounds sterling. Instead of exploiting it, he spent the rest of his life, more than forty years, bringing it back to life with his own hands and those of his helper René Lafortune. He planted around 16,000 trees, cut paths, built a house and a small chapel, and brought in Aldabra giant tortoises that now roam the island freely.
Grimshaw turned Moyenne into a nature sanctuary full of life, home to thousands of birds and around a hundred giant tortoises. Determined to preserve it, he turned down million-dollar offers from developers who wanted to make it a luxury resort. His great dream came true in 2008, when Moyenne was declared a National Park in its own right, one of the smallest in the world, and was later folded into the Sainte Anne Marine Park. Grimshaw died in 2012 and is buried on his island, next to graves that legend says belong to pirates.
His story, told in the book and documentary 'A Grain of Sand', has become a symbol of love for nature and of conservation on a human scale. Today, trips to the park usually include a stop on Moyenne to walk among the giant tortoises and learn about the legacy of the man who bought a wild island and brought it back to life. It is perhaps the most moving corner of the Sainte Anne Marine Park.
Today the Sainte Anne Marine National Park is the most popular sea trip from Mahé, and one of the best ways to see the underwater world of Seychelles without going far from Victoria. Every day, boats full of visitors leave the capital's harbour for the six islands. People go snorkelling over the corals, watch fish and turtles from glass-bottom boats, have lunch on Cerf Island and walk among the giant tortoises on Moyenne. It's an easy, family-friendly outing suitable for all ages.
The park brings together nature, history and tourism. While you enjoy the sea, each island recalls a chapter of the country's past: the 1770 settlement, whaling, the leper colony, the prison and the treasures of Moyenne. Some of the islands now have exclusive resorts set within the protected area, so you can stay inside the marine park itself, surrounded by turquoise water and within sight of the capital.
Like every reef on the planet, Sainte Anne's reefs are threatened by climate change and coral bleaching, and conserving them is an ongoing challenge. Seychelles, which led the way by protecting these waters in 1973, is still a leader in marine conservation worldwide. The Sainte Anne Marine Park, the first marine park in the Indian Ocean, still plays a double role. It is the place where the history of human settlement in Seychelles began, and it offers a living piece of the underwater paradise the archipelago is famous for, just a short boat ride from Victoria.
