Small Plane, Big Wall
It was a short flight from Miami, and I mean short. My Lyft ride to the airport was almost the same length as the two flights it took to get here. Before I get into it, I would like to thank Haley Davis for inviting me to visit her and making all of this possible. I’d also like to thank the awesome staff at CCMI (Central Caribbean Marine Institute) for putting up with another human on their remote field station.
View from the inside of the Twin Otter on the flight from Grand to Little Cayman. If you’ve got long legs be sure to be the first aboard and snag the seats at the back of the plane.
After a noisy hot flight, you land on a tiny airstrip that runs adjacent to the main road. Be sure you have your transportation sorted out to get to your accommodations since there are no taxis on the island. Haley had the pleasure of experiencing their island cruiser Blanch ( an old rusty Jeep Wrangler that gives off Jurassic Park vibes) break down which made for an exciting start to a short visit.
A month feels longer than it is, but words can’t express how happy we were to see each other again. We got straight into cooking a delicious curry and planning our weekend activities which of course included Diving.
Almost all dives on Little Cayman are done off of boats but it should be said that shore diving isn’t impossible. It is just a bit more of a challenge. Keep it simple dive off the boats. Since there are no rental cars on the island it is extremely difficult to find ways to transport your gear to a possible shore dive. Oh yeah, and the boats go to some locations as you’d be shore diving anyway. The handful of resorts make it extremely convenient for you. The term I heard used to describe this type of diving was “valet” diving which means it’s more relaxing for you! I love this concept but at the end of the day, I want to be responsible for how my gear is set up.
The handful of dive resorts includes Little Cayman Divers (who we dove with), Pirates Point Resort, and the Southern Cross Club. There may be one or two that I am missing but these are the main ones.
Haley below Little Cayman Divers 42ft Dive Boat.
Bloody Bay Wall
Regarded as the most dramatic wall in the Caribbean the Bloody Bay Wall on the northern side of Little Cayman is where almost all of the diving takes place. It exceeds its reputation with a nearly 5,000-foot drop-off into the abyss. I can confirm that the “call of the void” is real. Looking over this wall all I wanted to do was keep on descending. Each dive site has a mooring ball and depending on who you diving with that can decide which sites you dive. As the saying goes the early bird gets the worm. The first boat out gets free range of the sites, so don’t be afraid to get up early and get out there.
It is hard to comprehend the immense size of the Bloody Bay Wall. Look closely at the image on the left and you may be able to pick out the massive Sponges that are in the image on the right.
Never buy generic
What has this got to do with Little Cayman you ask? Nothing, but it has a lot to do with camera batteries… I decided not to bring my camera on the first dive of this trip as I have truly missed diving with the best dive buddy anyone could ask for and just wanted to enjoy goofing around underwater. To us, this looks like spelling out coral names to each other or me snapping my double-enders like one would do with maracas. All that just to see Haley’s eyes squint in her mask and an eruption of bubbles from her regulator. Definite signs of laughter. During our surface interval, I went to prep my camera for the second dive, and to my surprise, the battery was as flat as the seas that day. To my knowledge I had installed a fully charged battery the night before, leaving the camera off so that the battery would stay that way. Turns out it was the end of that battery’s life cycle. A cheap Amazon battery as flat as can be. I shrugged it off and hopped back in for a lovely dive still enjoying every minute of it. After some thought, I realized that this was the first fun dive I’d done in two years without a camera in my hands.
What dive sites did we visit?
Ann’s Attic
The Wall
Mixing Bowl
Jigsaw - The Best Site of the four for macro.
Kingston Bight - For a Mangrove Snorkel.
Of the four dive sites, the first three were rather similar to one another in terms of bottom composition. The hard Pan or bottom lies only a shallow thirty feet below the boat but swim a few hundred yards north either over the sand or massive Gorgonians and Barrel Sponges and you’re met with the Bloody Bay Wall. What I enjoyed about Ann’s Attic is you are Moored above a “mini wall” that leads you to a sandy bottom meaning you can check out the depths of the Bloody Bay Wall and then make your way back to a MUCH smaller wall where more marine life awaits. You’re always close to mind-bending depths so remember to check your depth and NDL frequently!
Meet Scoly
Diving at Mixing Bowl you’ll likely meet one of the locals, Scoly the Nurse Shark. Aptly named because well Scoly has scoliosis. Which is certainly a first sighting for me. Scoly was quite friendly. At one point Scoly nearly ran directly into my dome port. It was then I was able to capture this image below.
Scoly wasn’t the only friendly marine life we encountered. It is known that the Cayman Islands has the friendliest Nassau Groupers. We were told that divers used to “pet” them which is now frowned upon. I do not support touching marine life even if divers claim that the animals like it. I’m not sure how you would have enough information to make such a claim, they are wild animals after all.
Friendly Nassau Grouper.
Can’t forget about this hungry Hawksbill Sea Turtle munching on the reef!
Jigsaw - Macro lovers get ready!
At Jigsaw you'll find the boat moored up over sixty feet of water. Looking down through the beautiful blue Caribbean water you’ll see a mostly sandy bottom with patches of algae surrounded by a beautiful reef system. Here is where we don’t mind having our heads in the sand. I’d argue that this is why most of us go underwater - to put our heads in the sand. I was told the best way to find these sheep is to look for the clean pieces of algae. Even after getting that tip I still inspected each blade of algae.
Leaf Sheep Nudibranch on Udotea Algea Taken on a TG6
Is there macro? YES, absolutely. I do not recall who I was talking to before visiting Cayman but they had mentioned there is no macro life…oh how wrong they are. (I apologize if that person is you.) Among the sand, there were more Southern Stingrays than I had ever seen at once. It appeared they were investigating what it was we were looking at in the sand, maybe hoping we could point out critters for them to eat. Towards the end of the dive, I was watching this Southern Stingray circle around a rock blasting sand out from underneath it. As I looked closer in the sand plums I could see a Blenny that was successfully hiding on the opposite side of the rock as the stingray circled it.
Surrounding the sand patch was a beautiful reef system that I could have spent endless hours exploring
Kingston Bight
What is a bight, anyway? Bights are typically described as a concave bend or curvature in a coastline or may refer to a bay created by such a feature. Kingston Bight is a shallow bay filled with Seagrass and lined by Mangroves. This makes for the perfect nursery for all sorts of critters. The Mangrove roots protect different juvenile fish along with the Seagrass beds. It was very entertaining watching the fish dart in and out as we the noisy humans floated by.
A lone Butterfly Fish seeking refuge below the mangrove roots.
Exploring beneath the roots of these Mangroves was one of my favorite snorkeling experiences to date. What we did not expect to find among the Seagrass and mangroves were hundreds of the Fringe-back Dondice Nudibranch! We saw so many that rather quickly we stopped pointing them out to one another. As I was shooting wide angle it was no easy task to try and get one in frame. Haley on the other hand nailed these macro shots of them with her Olympus TG6.
As the reliable Dive Professionals Haley and I are, neither of us managed to bring our Snorkels to Little Cayman. Luckily there was no shortage of snorkels to borrow from CCMI. When borrowing equipment always be sure to thoroughly check and inspect it. I failed to do so and only once in the water did I find out there was a tear in the silicon leaving me to constantly have a flow of lovely saltwater into my mouth! Ops, lesson learned!
above images by Haley Davis
Slice of paradise
The memories we created in a short four days will last a lifetime. From walks on the secluded beaches to dock-side picnics with one too many mosquitos, there was never a dull moment. The last two evenings we found ourselves walking the beaches where we could find our slice of paradise. One of those evenings we found a little driftwood hut to call our own. The ocean beckoned us in as the swell calmly lapped at the shoreline. We had no choice but to take a dip and enjoy the sunset. Were our beers lukewarm at this point? Yes, did it matter no.
