You can’t pin down the diver who’s a perfect fit for the Cayman Islands. At first blush, it’s easy to say that the sheer walls are best for adrenaline-seekers. The otherworldly visibility, surpassing 100 feet most days, makes for thrilling dives, made even more exciting by the frequent drop-ins from Caribbean reef sharks, eagle rays and even scalloped hammerheads.
The deep holds its own allure, and Grand Cayman is set up for tec divers as well. There’s even a shark dive offered by Ocean Frontiers for an added rush.
Of course, the more you dive this Caribbean classic, the more you come to appreciate why it appeals to the fish hounds—those whose biggest thrills come from the smallest finds. Dive staff on Little Cayman and Cayman Brac are experts in marine science, having spent years studying the residents of their backyard reefs. You’ll want to bring your fish identification book—and brush up before you go—because if you weren’t someone who talked blennies and gobies at happy hour before, you certainly will be after logging some quality underwater time at this iconic, triple-hitter dive destination.
Alex MustardA group of tarpon hunts a swirling school of silversides off the western side of Grand Cayman.
I’m boxed in, and I like it. We’ve just dropped through the blue to slip within the craggy, coral-toothed canyon cutting through the reef, leading to Pat’s Wall—easily one of the most requested Grand Cayman dive sites. It’s regularly visited by Ocean Frontiers, a PADI Five Star IDC dive center on the East End, a quiet side of the island, away from the condos and beach bars of Seven Mile Beach. Underwater, this coast is much steeper than the gently sloping west side. Out here, the walls are sheer and the drama is nonstop.
“The grand reveal is waiting,” our dive guide James Snelgrove had said during the briefing just moments earlier. Now, with a few more fin kicks, he leads through the tight alleyway out past the wall.
The resulting view is one reason divers are hypnotized by the Cayman Islands. There’s something about hanging out over the abyss that gets your heart racing—so much so that my dive watch reminds me to slow my breathing.
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Luis Javier SandovalAn eagle ray feeds on a sandy bottom.
I can’t help it.
Snelgrove edges in closer to the wall. From here, we still appreciate the 100 feet of visibility but can now easily spot the wide-set, black-bead eyes of a hawksbill turtle, its head periscoping above the brain corals.
The schooling fish are impossible to miss. Ribbons of creole wrasse, followed by yellow snapper, flutter over the wall’s edge and waterfall down before making their way back to the top of the wall.
The second dive takes us to Snapper Hole, shallower but every bit as packed with fish. It’s as fun to navigate the warren of caverns and swim-throughs as it is to watch the schooling blue-striped grunts and schoolmaster snapper disperse and regroup under the overhangs.
Best Dive Sites Grand Cayman
- Pat’s Wall
- USS Kittiwake
- Snapper Hole
- Orange Canyon
- Devil’s Grotto
David M. BenzCoral covers structure on the USS Kittiwake.
Come the next morning, I’m on the west side—in George Town, the heart of the action on Grand Cayman. This whole stretch, from the city and along Seven Mile Beach, serves up a handful of nightclubs, along with yoga studios, juice bars, five-star dining and big-name hotels.
Today, I’m diving with Sunset Divers, a popular operator that’s been diving Grand Cayman since 1972.
This trip’s target: the USS Kittiwake. Sunset Divers also shows guests incredible walls, such as the sponge-covered Orange Canyon, but today, the first stop is metal. No visit to Grand is complete without a dip at this Chanticleer-class submarine rescue ship, a must-see opportunity to swim through all 251 feet.
Our guide, a Master Scuba Diver Trainer named Tyler Hart, leads us to the stern.
“It’s not a rule-rule but an accepted practice between the dive shops that we all move from the stern to the bow,” he’s told us earlier.
Brook PetersonA Caribbean reef shark passes overhead off Grand Cayman’s East End.
The corridors are narrow enough to warrant this practice, and to give the tour the feeling of proper wreck penetration. We see light at all times as he leads at a gentle pace to the engineer room with two V-12 engines, past the smokestack and the bank room where the compressed air was kept and on to the mess hall and past the recompression chambers.
There’s a slight current washing past us, so I’m not all that surprised to look up and see a pair of eagle rays flying slowly past the mast.
The rays are just one of the bigger species divers regularly see here. At the next dive, Devil’s Grotto, we get our share of tarpon encounters. This site is legendary for the baitballs that tuck up among the corals, then scatter like shattered disco balls when predators approach. It’s magical now, but I’m told this is nothing compared to the two weeks in September and October when they pack the site like, well, sardines.
Where to Eat
Out east, Captain Herman’s Fish Fry dishes up a whole meal— think jerk chicken and rice and beans—for $8 to $12. If you want an island cocktail with your mango ceviche or grilled catch of the day, head to the Rum Deck at Rum Point Beach Club.
Karol Kozlowski / Awl ImagesWhen not submerged, divers can enjoy a trip to Grand Cayman's Crystal Caves.
More to Explore
Calm seas? Rent a paddleboard from Happy Days for a different vantage point of Seven Mile Beach. Head to the north side to explore Crystal Caves, accessible only with a guided tour, which must be prebooked. Cayman Crystal Caves offers eight tours a day, as well as evening tours.
Alex MustardA Nassau grouper poses for a photographer.
See it from above and instantly understand why Mixing Bowl is the most requested site on Little Cayman—the least populated of the three islands, appealing mainly to divers, birders and hikers.
The site combines the best of what this undeveloped nature paradise has on offer. Mixing Bowl is part of Bloody Bay Marine Park—and no, Bloody Bay is not one dive site, but a collection of more than 20—and it’s where two distinct sections of the park meet: the sheer wall and the sandy boulevards of Jackson’s Bight.
“It’s a dive site that checks all the boxes,” says Ethan Shenker, a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor with Reef Divers and Little Cayman Beach Resort.
The start of the dive doesn’t portend what’s to come. The reef starts at 18 feet, so it’s a short descent, which throws off divers expecting more of a free fall.
Must Dive
- Mixing Bowl
- Donna’s Delight
- Great Wall West
- Great Wall East
- Anne’s Attic
Alex MustardA hairy pipe-horse swims over the seabed.
A pack of Nassau grouper dog us a bit as we first drop down, curious to see what we’ll do.
That free fall starts after I follow Shenker a few more fin kicks to the wall’s edge. He drops to 80 feet, then swims straight out into the blue. He’d told us about this bit back at the surface. “Kicking out gives you a sense of scale and magnitude of the wall. It always makes me feel like a piece of rice.”
I look down and see what he means. The bottom here lies 11,000 feet below. My eyes trace the wall back up. There, no more than 20 feet below us, is a Caribbean reef shark, unbothered by our presence.
Alex MustardSponges proliferate on a reef at Bloody Bay Wall
We linger as we take in the wall, then head shallower to explore the sand flats, a playground where macro life abounds. Headshield slugs—striped orange, black and electric cobalt—march along the sand. We spy peacock flounder and yellow-head jaw fish. Pipehorses are frequently spotted here, but today it’s not in the cards.
The next day, I’m back on the wall, this time led by Mike Schouten, dive manager at Southern Cross Club resort. He also happened to be the perfect guide for a recent group completing fish identification dives to gather data for the Reef Environmental Educational Foundation, aka REEF. If you’re a fish geek, Schouten’s your guy.
This morning, before we dive the hidden gem Donna’s Delight, he lets us know that conchs favor the area right under the boat. “Those with good eyes can see the eggs as well,” he says.
He tips us to look for filefish among the black coral and tusked gobies in barrel sponges.
During the dive, he’s patient. Instead of the vigorous gestures of a greener dive guide, Schouten trusts that his charges know that when he pauses, there’s something to see. He hovers patiently, allowing the diver to scan a couple times, then gestures if they still can’t find the highlight.
Schouten points to several damselfish, which at first seem like nothing much. But after a while, we see they’re clinging to patches of eggs, both light and dark in color.
It’s the sort of thing that reminds us why we need a seasoned guide like Schouten. The sheer topography of Little Cayman stuns all on its own, but there’s no better way to meet and mingle among the local fish communities than to be introduced by a local.
Where to Eat
Seahorse Cafe serves only breakfast and lunch, and shouldn’t be missed for its smoothies, breakfast sandwiches and gluten-free pancakes. For an “only here” experience, follow the smell of barbecue toward the airport, where, on Thursdays and Fridays, $20 buys a heaping plate of jerk chicken and festival, a Jamaican corn bread.
More to Explore
Rent a car and visit Point of Sand, known for its soft, white-sand beach, on the northeastern tip of Little Cayman, then make the 22.37-mile loop of the island. For a shorter excursion, bike to Jackson’s Bight for a lovely beach and snorkel spot. Southern Cross Club and Little Cayman Beach Resort offer free bikes for guests to use.
Luis Javier SandovalA brittle sea star perches on a sponge.
At 14 square miles, Cayman Brac— rhymes with “jack”—stands just slightly larger than Little Cayman. Its population, however, is more than 10 times larger, and with that comes more infrastructure. Brac is a far cry from Grand Cayman, but it still delivers a lot: more restaurants, more shopping, more culture—and a bigger variety of diving.
Starting with wrecks.
This morning, I’m with Reef Divers and Barb MacDowell, a PADI Instructor who has lived on the island since they sank the Captain Keith Tibbetts wreck in 1996. The 330-foot Russian military frigate, gifted to Cuba and then sold to the Cayman Islands, is prized for its story. Now, sunk for almost 30 years, it’s perhaps more prized for sponge growth.
“Anything steel is just covered—they stick to it even better,” she says.
Underwater, I see what she means. Purple vase, yellow tube, red rope, touch-me-not and strawberry sponges crowd the walls, the deck and even the gun on the deck.
The sponge growth is so prolific that scientists came to study the yellow tube sponges, finding 12 distinct species. “Who even knew there were 12 species of yellow tube sponges?” Mac-Dowell had joked during the briefing.
That kind of diversity allows for a veritable sponge jungle where brittle stars swing between the branches, all supporting a food chain that draws in the bigger predators—goliath grouper and horse-eye jacks. Life piles up, so much so that hammerheads and even pilot whales have been spotted in the vicinity.
Today, we meet barracuda and, in the sand, a pair of Southern stingrays, before it’s on to the next site.
Brac has several other wrecks, including the 36-foot Kissimmee tugboat and the 55-foot Cayman Mariner.
Must Dive
- M/V Captain Keith Tibbetts
- Wilderness Wall
- Elkhorn Forest
- Snapper Reef
- Cemetery Wall
Brandon ColeA school of horse-eye jacks.
We drop down on the 190-foot Preacher’s Barge, mixing in among the schooling grunts and free-range lobsters.
The next day, I’m out with Brac Scuba Shack and divemaster Katie Ebanks. Brac is home to a mix of reefs and more than a dozen walls, including Anchor Wall, East Chute and Strawberry Sponge Wall.
We’re headed to Wilderness Wall, a site known for prolific fish life. We drop down and follow the wall for a while at 100 feet before coming to a horseshoe bend in the reef, with sand surrounding a pinnacle.
Here we see what Ebanks in her dive briefing had called “the interaction zone.”
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Cayman Brac sits on a ridge of the Cayman Trench, which plummets to 25,000 feet at its deepest point. Deep, nutrient-rich water flows from the depths of the trench up along the south side of the island. Where it hits the wall, it creates an upwelling zone.
Luis Javier SandovalA gun atop the deck of the Captain Keith Tibbetts wreck is covered in growth.
“We really can’t see the plankton, but fish see them,” Ebanks said. “That’s why all the schools of fish are right there.”
Today, it’s a traffic jam of blue chromis intersecting with brown chromis. Two lanes over, creole wrasse charge inland, diverted by mounds of brain and encrusting corals.
In her first life, Ebanks was a marine scientist, so she loves pointing out lesser known and underappreciated finds. Free-swimming crinoids, with a mass of feathery, spindly arms, look like reef tarantulas. They favor this area, and Ebanks makes sure we don’t miss them.
The health of the reefs allows for the big wows, like the scalloped hammerheads that occasionally pass through December to April, but it’s also why every day, every dive serves up these other surprises, smaller in scale but no less resonant to the seasoned diver.
Where to Eat
Coral Isle, set right on the water, dishes up flavor-rich plates of Cayman-style fish, stewed conch and stewed goat. Locals head to Captain’s Table Bar and Restaurant for Taco Tuesday. Don’t miss Barracuda’s Bar and Grill for wood-fired pizzas and barbecue ribs.
Shutterstock
More to Explore
Stop by the store Nim Things in Spot Bay to shop locally made fine art, jewelry and straw handbags. Stretch your legs with a hike from Peter’s Cave to the East End Lighthouse. Check what’s happening at the National Trust, which hosts free tree identification walks and cultural preservation talks.
Click here to find a PADI resort or operator in the Cayman Islands.
