Another shore diving question-Grand, Little or Brac?

[Draq]

My family likes shore diving. We have been to Bonaire and Curacao and would like to check out the Caymans. I realize that the Cayman Islands aren't really known for shore diving, but it looks like I can get substantially better airfare to there at the moment.

Any suggestions on which island offers better shore diving and dive ops who will let us take tanks away, have nice house reefs, etc.

Thanks for any input.

 

[diversteve]

On Grand Cayman most of the better known shore dives have dive resorts on them. Since the law is that they own the property to the waterline, you have to rent tanks from them to dive there. And afaik, none of them allow you to remove tanks from their property. There is a diveshop in/near West Bay that rents tanks. Someone here probably knows the name.

This would include:

Sunset House (been there)
Eden Rock/Devils Grotto (been there)
Fosters'/Cheeseburger Reef (not sure about this one)
Turtle Reef - Sun Divers (been there)
Lighthouse Point - Divetech
Cobalt Coast - Divetech

In my opinion, Turtle Reef was the best dive of the three. The only open shore dive I know of on the west side is Cemetary Reef. Babylon on the northeast side is possible from shore but you have to know where it is and make a long swim out.

I'm not sure if you know, but Brac Reef Resort was shredded by Hurricane Paloma and will need to be completely rebuilt. Since the Divi closed a couple years ago is there anywhere else to stay there now? I don't know.

 

[divesergeant]

draq,

We rent tanks from Eden Rock; they allow us to take them wherever we want to dive. Eden Rock (Cayman?s best shore and boat diving shop) is right at the south side of the port in SMB.

The shore dives at Turtle Reef (run by Sundivers, Home page Cayman Islands,Grand Cayman,Cayman,Cayman,Cayman Islands,Cayman,Grand Cayman) and Lighthouse Point (run by Divetech, www.divetech.com) are both quite good. There are two walls there. The first is a mini wall that drops to maybe 60 feet (Alex777: help me out here, I can't remember all the details on depths!) and a bit past that the main wall drops off to la-la land. So, you can counteach of these as four dives; mini wall heading north and south and main wall north and south.

I've never dived Babylon, but there is quite a lot on it here and on the Cayman Activity Guide forum (www.caymanactivityguide.com)

We've never stayed on Little Cayman, so I'm no help there. We did the Brac a few years ago but stayed at the Brac Reef Beach resort, so any info I could give is moot right now.

DS

 

[Diver Lori]

ShoreDiving.com - Your Shore Diving and Snorkeling Web Community!

I've dived Eden, Sunset and DiveTech on GC. I know there's shore diving on Brac, but did not partake when I was there.

 

[Damselfish]

I love Cayman but if I only wanted to shore dive I wouldn't go there. You'll probably be diving the same sites a lot and miss what Cayman is famous for. If you want to do something like combine morning boats with afternoon shore dives then it's fine.

I personally think the shore diving at Sunset House is pretty beat up, and I've heard the same about Devils Grotto. I suspect the same about Cheeseburger but it's been a long time since I dove it and not from shore. All those sites have been heavily dove for years. Turtle Reef is very nice with lots of options and worth diving a number of times. Cobalt Coast is a very long swim to a reef that I don't think is worth the swim, and an even longer swim to the wall - which is good but unless you do that very long swim on the surface you won't have much time out there. A good dive to rent a scooter. All things considered, I personally wouldn't bother with shore diving Cobalt Coast or Sunset House unless I happened to be staying there. Lighthouse Point is supposed to be good but I haven't had a chance yet.

Little Cayman supposedly you can shore dive a lot of sites. But for a variety of reasons it's not something you see visitors doing. I don't know about Brac but it sounds like that's off the table for awhile anyway.

 

[pkdiver]

We just returned from Grand Cayman this week and did several shore dives at Turtle Reef (Sun Divers @ the Cracked Conch) and one at Sunset House. The diving at turtle reef was fantastic and we will definitely go back there again. We also did one dive at Sunset house but as pointed out in an earler post, the reef is pretty beat up there compared to Turtle Reef. We tried to dive at Cobalt Coast (Divetech) but a front had come in and it was too rough for diving.

 

[Damselfish]

That can be a issue at Cobalt Coast especially in the winter, you're around the "corner" of the island and kind of on the North wall. You can get blown out of shore diving there just like you can get blown out of North wall boat diving. We even got clobbered for most of a week in April once and "rough" would have been an understatement - big waves crashing over the CC dock. I don't know how often it happens. (We got blown out at Sunset House for a day once but I think that's more of a fluke.)

 

[Alex777]

I love Cayman but if I only wanted to shore dive I wouldn't go there. You'll probably be diving the same sites a lot and miss what Cayman is famous for. If you want to do something like combine morning boats with afternoon shore dives then it's fine.

I personally think the shore diving at Sunset House is pretty beat up, and I've heard the same about Devils Grotto. I suspect the same about Cheeseburger but it's been a long time since I dove it and not from shore. All those sites have been heavily dove for years. Turtle Reef is very nice with lots of options and worth diving a number of times. Cobalt Coast is a very long swim to a reef that I don't think is worth the swim, and an even longer swim to the wall - which is good but unless you do that very long swim on the surface you won't have much time out there. A good dive to rent a scooter. All things considered, I personally wouldn't bother with shore diving Cobalt Coast or Sunset House unless I happened to be staying there. Lighthouse Point is supposed to be good but I haven't had a chance yet.

I agree with all that. I can confirm that Cheeseburger Reef is pretty beaten up. Lighthouse Point is interesting if you go out to the main wall, but the mini-wall there is not worth visiting.

 

[caymaniac]

The Brac has some fine shore diving, the problem is there may not be any diving for quite a while as the hurricane has eliminated the last resort (Brac Reef Resort -destroyed), 90% of the homes are damaged or destoyed, it could be at least a year or maybe...none for 5 years. Who has the spare money to rebuild, even if they receive an insurance settlement they may not rebuild.

 

[zf2nt]

Little Cayman supposedly you can shore dive a lot of sites. But for a variety of reasons it's not something you see visitors doing...

Very true. I've seen a few people shore diving Little Cayman over the years there, but not many. Part of the reason is that most people staying on Little Cayman are at one of the resorts and therefore go out on the resort's boat. I'm sure one big barrier to shore diving is that you have to have a car to get around, and that's not cheap.

I regularly dive (from shore) all of the north shore dive sites on Little Cayman except Cascades, and that's just because I'm too lazy to swim all the way out there. The sites west of Mixing Bowl require fairly calm conditions in order to pick your way through the fringing reef, but all of the Jackson Bay sites can be done in very rough water. The only problem with the Jackson Bay sites is finding an access trail. There's a trail through the woods I've maintained at Mixing Bowl, and I regularly clip the trail back to Sara's Set. Outside of those two, all the diving I do in Jackson Bay is via the drive-in at Cumber's Caves.

I just got off the phone this morning with some friends on Little Cayman, and it does sound bleak since Paloma. It's going to be quite a while before Little Cayman gets back to normal. I'm going down for the month of January to try to clean up.

Bruce