By Chase Sheldon
Warm throughout the year, even in the depths of the winter months. Crystal clear waters that never fail to take away your breath and leave you speechless. The Cayman Islands offers some of the best diving in the Caribbean, if not the world. It isn’t just the quantity of dive sites that are available though, with more than three hundred and sixty dive sites that can be found dotted all around the island, but that doesn’t really communicate just the width and breadth of possibility that occurs so few miles from these beautiful islands.
There is no way to describe all the dive sites that you could visit while in the Cayman Islands. With so many opportunities, it's even difficult to figure out which dive sites to claim are the ‘best’. There are a few though, some that stand out among the rest. These dive sites, whether by some unique feature or circumstance, do offer something special, even compared to the many other choices. A great choice for beginners and experienced divers who want to see something different would be Kittiwake. This isn’t a location or a reef, but the name of the submarine support ship, the USS Kittiwake. This ship was sunk in 2011, and was purposely chosen for the open rooms and structure, where experienced divers could get into the ship and explore. For those not as experienced though? The main decks are still teeming with life and open to the ocean.
If you are more interested in reef life, eels, lobsters, and goliath groupers, you should head to the Cayman Brac, where the Bert Brothers Boulders sits. This site has superb reefs, with Elkhorn corals that have settled the tops of the ridges while gorgonians, hard corals, and tube sponges sit amongst the gullies. If you are lucky, you may also see a Flying Gurnard, a species of fish with large, fan-like fins that splay out like an umbrella underwater.
Of course, no trip to the Cayman Islands would be complete without a trip down to Stingray City, one of the best sites to see, if you haven’t already guessed, stingrays. Hordes of Southern Stingrays swarm this area daily, hundreds of them swimming gracefully, without a care for the humans in their home. At its deepest, Stingray City is only twelve feet below, but along with the plethora of friendly rays, you can also find some very interesting corals to explore as well.
Learn more about diving in the Cayman Islands.
The Cayman Islands offer more than can be described in a single sitting, more than can be described in ten blogs. Even getting into the description of all the possible dive sites around the island would do a disservice to the inland activities, tours, restaurants, and beautiful locales that have to be seen to be believed. That the best way to encounter this wonderful world isn’t to read about it, but to go there, visit the Cayman Islands in person and learn more about diving and everything else the Cayman Islands has to offer.