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Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Today we went diving in Grand Cayman. There were 5 cruise ships here today and all of us had to go to and from the ship by tender.

We managed to fit in 3 dives. For the first we went to Chelonia. This is a relatively new dive site, as the government is working towards the goal of having 365 dive sites in Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac, making it possible to dive a different site every day. At Chelonia we saw a sea turtle, making my day worthwhile. It was a young one, but let me get very close. The reef was healthy and this was a good dive site.

Our second dive was at Oro Verde. This site has a sunken ship which has been subsequently torn apart and moved by hurricanes. Reportedly, the ship was carrying produce, but the captain was also smuggling drugs. When his crew found out they wanted a cut of the profits and, when declined, they murdered the captain. The crew managed to run the ship aground while trying to escape Cayman authorities and the ship was taken by the government and subsequently sunk for diving. The ship has been down long enough that it is starting to form an artificial reef and there were quite a few fish around it. Nearby was Paradise Reef, which was also a nice, healthy reef.

We had a break for lunch and headed out to a local seaside restaurant. After that we went out for our last dive. This was at Round Rock. Most of the group was on their first dive of the day and went pretty deep while Paul and I stayed above 70 feet. This site has a wall and a reef. We dove here back in 2007. It, too, was a good dive.

Grand Cayman is definitely one of the top Caribbean dive locations and is very worthwhile, but having dove Bonaire and Cozumel in the past year I have to note that both of them have more fish and more types of fish than Cayman. These dives today had maybe 20% of the number of fish we usually see in Bonaire with a similar decrease in the variety of fish. It does appear that Grand Cayman is having better success with controlling Lionfish than Cozumel, where there doesn’t seem to be any organized effort to control them, or even Bonaire, where they are actively hunting them. Our divemaster was actively looking for them and killed one and saw 2 others. I didn’t see any despite looking. We would see one or two a day in Bonaire and we see them frequently in Cozumel. If you plan on diving on Grand Cayman, we strongly recommend Deep Blue Divers. If you can’t get with them there are 3 other dive operations that work from the same site and I doubt you’d be disappointed with any of them.

The dive boat dropped us off at one of the beaches of 7 Mile Beach and we managed to get a pretty cheap ride back into town on a bus catering to cruise ship tourists. We took our wet and sandy selves to our ship’s tender, opted for the elevator ride up the 5 floors rather than lugging the gear up stairs, and managed to clean everything off in our tiny cabin shower. The evening was spent holding down deck chairs in the quiet section of the back of the ship.

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