The Best of Grand Cayman in Photos

A stingray hugs the sand.

Alex Mustard

Wall diving put the Cayman Islands on the map decades ago, and today, underwater shooters still flock to sites such as Babylon on North Wall — which ofers massive overhangs that are spectacularly decorated with deep-water sea fans and sponges.

Alex Mustard

Grand Cayman’s reefs and walls are perfect for photographers shooting wide-angle reef scenes of corals and sponges. But big pelagics, including eagle rays, turtles, hammerheads and gray reef sharks, can also be found cruising the depths.

Alex Mustard

Use a model to give a sense of scale when photographing the 521-foot former naval vessel USS Kittiwake, and experiment with both available sunlight and of-camera strobes to produce varying effects.

Alex Mustard

Exploring the Kittiwake.

Alex Mustard

Favorite Secret Spot: Sunset Reef, pictured above. This is an amazing macro site, day or night.

Favorite wall: Babylon on North Wall.

Favorite Swim-Through Canyon: Babylon Hanging Gardens, a North Wall swim-through filled with gorgonians, black corals, sponges and big fish.

Favorite Time: Visit during the week after September’s full moon, and you have a chance to see coral spawning.

Favorite Bar: My Bar at Sunset House.

Favorite Surface Interval: Queen Elizabeth’s Botanic Gardens to see indigenous blue iguanas.

Alex Mustard

Alex Mustard first visited Grand Cayman in 1992, falling in love with the island’s water clarity and abundant marine life. Twenty years later, Alex is still photographing the island’s underwater treasures and leads frequent Digital Madness workshops.

Common in the waters of Grand Cayman, hawksbill turtles can be found near or on sponges. Hawksbills feed almost exclusively on these primitive animals. This turtle was photographed on the reef at Aquarium, a popular site of Seven Mile Beach.

Cathy Church

When you spot a cleaner shrimp rocking its body from side to side and waving its antennae, like this spotted cleaner shrimp photographed at Eden Rock, it’s advertising to potential clients — nearby fish with aggravating parasites — that it’s available for cleaning.

Cathy Church

With their branched skeletons growing in feathery or flowery patterns, hydroids like this solitary gorgonian offer interesting compositions for macro shooters. Lovely to look at, but avoid touching: The translucent tentacles are toxic and will sting bare skin.

Cathy Church

Orange Canyon, this aptly named drop-of on West Wall, is a photographer’s dream with its saturated colors and varied fish life. Striking orange sponges grace the reef and ofer a colorful focal point for photographers.

Cathy Church

Favorite Not-So-Secret Spot, above: I have taken hundreds of students to photograph “my” light beam in Devil’s Grotto — it is really amazing when it is filled with silversides.

Favorite Wide-angle Site: Orange Canyon — a lot of photos from this site were used in my airport mural at Owen Roberts Airport.

Favorite Bar: When I have a friend visiting on the island, we go to the bar at the Grand Cayman Westin Casuarina on Seven Mile Beach to listen to concert pianist George Davidson, and then we take our drinks out to the beach and listen to the soft sound of the waves.

Favorite Surface Interval: Why would anyone want to spend time topside when they can be underwater?

My Camera Setup: Nikon D3x in an Aquatica housing with Heinrich Wiekamp TTL converter and two Inon Z240 strobes on Ultralight arms.

Cathy Church

Cathy Church came to Grand Cayman in 1971 when friends Ron and Nancy Sefton were building the Spanish Bay Reef Resort (now closed). In 1972, Cathy began teaching classes there; today, she runs Cathy Church’s Photo Centre at Sunset House.

Marked by distinctive striped bars, tiger grouper frequent cleaner stations and are sometimes curious about divers when approached cautiously.

Elly Wray

A school of Caribbean reef squid photographed near the surface on Cathleen’s Reef, located of the north shore of the island’s East End. Try not to overexpose by casting too much light on their shiny bodies — if you do, you won’t capture their beautiful colors.

Elly Wray

When photographing wrecks, look for smaller critters that give the wreck personality, like this squirrelfish on the Kittiwake.

Elly Wray

A close-up view of a filefish.

Elly Wray

A Goliath grouper found on the sand underneath the Kittiwake.

Elly Wray

It’s possible to dive at Stingray City with southern stingrays, but try to arrange at least one small-group snorkeling excursion to Sandbar and capture the rays as they quietly skim the bottom. Operators can get you in the water at dawn, before the crowds arrive.

Elly Wray

Favorite macro site, above: Sunset Reef and Kittiwake.

Favorite Wall: Babylon, Anchor Point, Three Sisters and Breaker’s Cutback.

Favorite Wide-angle site: Snapper Hole, Grouper Grotto and Ironshore Gardens in summer months, when they teem with silversides.

Favorite Swim-through/canyon: Ironshore Gardens

Favorite Secret Spot: Blackwater diving (open-ocean night diving while tethered to drift lines) — we’ve seen all kinds of diffucult-to-identify creatures: strange squids, shrimps, tunicates and larval-stage crustaceans, as well as bigger guys like pelagic stingrays.

Favorite Restaurant: Tukka, East End, for its fresh lionfish.

Favorite Surface Interval: I am learning how to kiteboard.

Elly Wray

Elly Wray came to Grand Cayman with her father in 2001, did a Discover Scuba Diver class and tried a point-and-shoot camera. She never looked back — since 2008, Elly has been the photo and video pro at Ocean Frontiers, located on the island’s East End.