Scuba Diving
Many books, picture guides and magazine articles have been published on the subject of diving in the Cayman Islands, and, quite simply, these islands have the best scuba diving that you’ll ever find.
The sheer number and diversity of the dive sites is truly amazing.
A few of the many diving opportunities include wall dives, cave dives, coral garden dives, reef dives, wreck dives, Stingray City dives, and the list goes on. We won’t mention dive sites by name since these won’t mean anything to you, but suffice it to say, that after you’ve visited us and dived our waters, the dive site names will be embedded in your memory. Within the Cayman Islands there are several hundred named and regularly visited dive sites, and the underwater visibility is often over 100 feet – on all three islands!
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The scuba diving industry is well established and operates to high standards. All scuba operators employ dive masters with professional certification and safety standards. Grand Cayman has a decompression chamber, and most cases of decompression sickness, or ‘the bends’, can be successfully treated locally. For beginners who want to get certified, courses are widely available and thousands of divers have earned their certification while on vacation here.
Conservation of our undersea world is crucial to the well being of these islands and we ask you to observe the following simple rule when diving our waters – LOOK, BUT DON’T TOUCH!!! The numerous and spectacular coral reefs ringing the Cayman Islands are extremely sensitive, and you may create more damage than you ever imagined. Some coral grows less than an inch per year and breakage by careless divers can take decades to be repaired. Please be careful not to bump, stand on, break or even touch the coral.
The coral reefs and other undersea colonies have evolved over thousands of years and nature has determined the correct balance of marine life. In spite of what you may see others doing, please do not feed the fish, including stingrays. Constant feeding by humans disrupts nature’s delicate balance and can have dramatic effects on the future of the reef. If a fish population expands due to constant human intervention by feeding, and that food source is then disrupted, there could be negative consequences for the entire surrounding area.
Once you have arrived and decided to dive our waters, you’ll need to find a company to dive with. There are some “cattle boat” diving operators with disproportionate numbers of divers to instructors, so you should inquire about the maximum number of divers on a given trip. According to your taste, it may be better to go with a smaller group where you get more personalized service, and smaller groups also create less stress and damage to the reef.
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