Falling for the Cayman Islands

Jean Pierce

The Underwater Scene
For your diving pleasure, the Cayman Islands offer just about the most perfect, and the most exciting, conditions you can imagine. Visibility ranges from 75 to 100 feet in waters warmed to a toasty 80 to 85 degrees. Still, a light wetsuit is a good idea, especially for those deeper dives.

With their fringing reefs, shallow shelves and quick shoreline drop-offs, snorkellers and divers alike have almost instant access to both shallow and deep reef environments. Boat rides are seldom more than 20 minutes out, and (this is a hot tip) shore diving is superb, particularly on the Brac and Grand Cayman.

Ringing the islands is a narrow, shallow shelf with both spur-and-groove and patch-reef coral formations. The spurs are separated by sandy grooves and extend perpendicular to the shoreline, reaching out to the shelf edge. Just beyond the shelf precipitous walls plunge thousands of feet into the Cayman Trench, the deepest water in the Caribbean.

Corals and sponges carpet the walls. Everywhere, you'll find formations of mountainous star coral, brain coral and shingle-like sheet coral. Gorgonians -- the sea whips, plumes and fans -- stretch out for sunlight over ledges bulging with giant barrel sponges and tube sponges. Waters teem with tropicals, rays, schools of tarpon and sea turtles, with an occasional blacktip wandering in from the deep. 

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