Eddy's Scuba Blog

The crossing from Cayman Brac to Grand Cayman last night was pretty smooth. The Nekton ships have a pretty smooth ride. You don't even feel that you are even moving. We woke up today on the Northeast side of Grand Cayman. The plan was to do five dives around Grand Cayman: two at McCurley's Wall, an afternoon at Cayman's signature Stingray City, another afternoon dive at Tarpoon Alley and finally back for a night dive to Jax Dax, where did our very first dive on this cruise.

McCurley's Wall
The briefing today was given by Captain Nelson, who said this was one of his favorite dive sites. The main attraction of this site is a pinnacle right next to a wall that creates a little "canyon" that is 90 ft. deep. The canyon is filled with lots of black coral and sponges.

Indeed the site was spectacular. As we approached the pinnacle we went thru the canyon first. The crossing took a couple of minutes, but I stopped at the bottom to take some pictures. The bottom was at 90 ft. Once I crossed it, I stayed at around 70 ft and took some pictures of the surroundings.

The health of the coral was pretty good considering that Hurricane Ivan hit Grand Cayman in 2004. Perhaps the Northeast side suffer as much as the West side. On the West side you could not see black corals like this one:

At McCurley's we did two dives. On the first dive we visited the Pinnacle and on the second we stayed on the shallow area. We could not do the pinnacle again because it was too deep (90 ft.)
On the shallow area we found some interesting creatures. Like this whitespotted filefish, which I think is one of the ugliest fish.

When I was about return to the boat I noticed this barracuda hanging out near the surface at 40 ft. I put the skills I learned in one of the photo course to practice: take the picture from below the fish. I aimed the strobe at his head, so I got a good shot at the eye.

Once I was done taking pictures of the barracuda, I noticed something moving near the sandy area below the boat, near some coral heads. I checked my air and I had plenty of air left (more than 1300 psi) so I decided to investigate. When I reached the bottom at 52 ft, I realized that it was a juvenile yellow stingray. I took a couple of pictures of it. To make sure people got the idea of how tiny the stingray was when they see the picture, I put my hand next it in the picture. Here's that picture. This was truly something very unique.

In the effort to get a good picture of the yellow stingray my BS got tangled up with a soft coral. When I tried untangled myself I couldn't. So I unstrapped my left arm (I was tangled on that side) and voila, I was then able to free myself without breaking the coral.

The Signature Dive Site of Grand Cayman: Stingray City
After the morning dive at McCurley's Wall we sailed Northwesterly towards Stingray City, the Signature Dive of Grand Cayman, also a world famous snorkeling and tourist attraction. Any magazine, or brochure that talks about Grand Cayman has a picture of Stingray City. At first, it sounded too "touristy" for me; however, people that have done it before started saying to me "you have to do it, it's an experience."

Stingray City is a not a man-made attraction, it is a sandbar with 15 ft of water located on channel that cuts through the barrier reef that protects the North Sound, located in the Northwest side of Grand Cayman. When I departed Grand Cayman, I had the chance to take an aerial view of Stingray City. You could (barely) see about eight boats on a same point on the sandbar (in the middle of the picture, right under the airplane wing).

Stingrays at Stingray City are wild animals, not grown in captivity. The story goes that fishermen on their way back to port would stop at this sandbar to take advantage of the calm shallow waters to clean their catch and fillet them. Naturally they would throw the fish guts overboard. Stingrays who are fond of sandy shallow waters to eat mollusks and crustaceans found out about this practice and became very used to the easy food. Over time they even got accostumed to being fed. Many years later some local divers realized that not only were there lots of stingrays in that area, but that you could feed them by hand. In 1987, Skin Diver Magazine wrote about this place, and the rest is history.

We arrived at Stingray City at about 1:30pm. After lunch, Kat, one of the dive instructors, gave us a Powerpoint presentation right in the saloon. The briefing was quite interesting and useful. We were given instructions on how to "behave" around the stingrays. Here are some of the instructions:

• You should wear extra weight, usually 4 lbs, at least. The water is only 15 ft deep. All divers should gather around in one place in a circle and not move around. Kneel on the sand and stay in one place. Do not chase the singrays, they will come to you.
• You will be given a container with chopped squid. Stingrays are driven by their sense of smell and they suck their food like a vacuum cleaner. "Make the stingray work for their food", don't just give the food, tease them a bit and finally give it to them.
• Put the squid between your fingers and offer it exposing the back of your hand. Use your forearm as a "shield" as well. Do not leave your fingers protruding or they will be bitten.
• You can pet the bottom and the front edges of the stingray. Stay away from the top, back and the tail.

An so we went for the dive. The boat was right on Stingray City. Since the Rorqual has a pontoon (SWATH) design, it can dump ballast to make it more buoyant, so that's why it can navigate in 15 ft of water. That was very convenient for us, because we could just jump into the water there we were. I believe we were the biggest boat on the spot.

Once we were all in the water, we went to the bottom and formed a circle. One of the divemasters, pulled the squid out of the plastic containers and started feeding the stingrays. I first sat there and watched other people get mauled by the hungry stingrays. It was quite an spectacle! I watched my dive buddy Rodney being almost attacked by a stingray. He had to use both hands to push them back.

In the addition to the singrays, there were other "attackers" as well, namely sergeant majors and yellow tail snappers. They were like piranhas, very aggresive. You have to be very careful with your fingers with these guys, as the only "injury" that I got was a bite from a yellow tail snapper. You have to shoo them away when they get too close.

The environment was not great for pictures. There was a lot of silt caused by sand being kicked up; however, the experience of getting so close with wild animals was quite a rush. After a while I got the hang out of it and started feeding them as well. I also learned how to use my for arm as a shield so that my hand is not sucked into their mouths. Their bottoms are quite soft and nice to caress. Here's a picture of a stingrays mouth. It looks like a smiley face. I used the back of my left hand when I was close to the mouth. With my right hand I was holding my camera and taking the shot with one hand.

It was very difficult to "frame" a picture in this environment. It was very chaotic and you had to take advantage of the opportunities. It was almost like being a jounalist in the middle of the "war zone." In one of those ocassions, one of the the big stingrays got close to me that I managed to get this close up of his eye with a diver in the backgound.

Overall the experience was quite fun and memorable. We laughed at how some people in the group were attacked by the stingrays. We stayed on the water over one hour, about and hour and 15 minutes. The dive ended at about 3:15pm, but you had the option to go back in the water. Some people stayed on snorkeling.

Tarpoon Alley or Eagle Ray Alley?

For our second afternoon dive we moved slightly Northwest of Stingray City to a dive site called Tarpoon Alley. The dive site was also located at the mouth of the North Sound, right on the barrier reef.

For this dive, I was waiting for my buddy Nadine to go together, but she was chatting with Denise, one of the divemasters. It turns out that Nadine was thinking of joining the Nekton Rorqual crew. She did not finish talking, so I decided to tag along with the rest of the group that was already ready to go. I was however slightly behind.

When I jumped into the water, the rest of the group had already swam towards Tarpoon Alley. The water was unusually green on the surface. The top 10 ft of water was really green and the visibility was not as good as in previous dives. Once below 15 ft the visibility got better.
I could barely see the others in the group. As usual, I paid attention in the briefing, so I used my compass to go in the right direction. Lo and behold, I found the rest of the group already taking pictures of the tarpoons. There was a rock formation that looked like an alley. It was about 15-25 ft wide and 15 ft deep. The tarpoons would just sit there.

After being done taking pictures of tarpoons, I headed North towards the wall and drop off. There I saw Dina, one of the gals in the group, chasing something. I joined in the chase of what turned out to be a magnificent spotted eagle ray.

The eagle ray was apparently swimming from East to West and again from West to East. Dina and I chased the eagle ray on at least two runs. The eagle ray was apparently making a feeding run at an average of 60 ft. I later speculated that the green water on the surface was runoff from a river which is rich with nutrients. That would explain the sighting of the eagle ray. I managed to take this sequence of eight pictures and a movie. Dina and I were the only in the group got pictures of the eagle ray. We did however pay the price with a lot sweat. I was kicking very hard to keep pace with the ray. I believe that I got as close as 4 ft to it.

I later learned that Tarpoon Alley was right next to another dive site called Eagle Ray Pass. We must have been on that site, the name was very appropriate ;). This dive was quite a pleasant surprise, my initial dissapointing reaction of green murky water turned later into a quite exhilarating adventure in the end. Not only did I had the chance to see up close and personal a spotted eagle ray, but I also saw other big creatures like a sea turtle and a big stingray swimming on the wall. That was odd because they are usually around sandy areas.

Night Dive at Jax Dax

At dinner, all I talked about was the spotted eagle ray. In the end, my dive buddy Nadine never went on the dive. So she missed this great opportunity. I remember that at the MV Tibbets Destroyer site, she was very keen on getting a picture of an eagle ray. The one that we saw at Tarpoon Alley was double the size of that one, about 4-5 ft wide. I teased her about this all througout dinner.

After dinner we did our last night dive (for this cruise) at Jax Dax, the site where we started on the West side of Grand Cayman. When I first dove that site, I wasn't very impressed. So I wasn't expecting any surprises. We did see some interesting creatures like this smooth trunkfish.

Towards the end of the dive, somebody spotted this crab. It was a species that I had never seen before. It had two eyes on the back of its shell. As many other marine species, the "fake eyes" are usually on the tail of the animal in order to fool predators. This one is called "Ocellate Swimming Crab."

That was end of an action-packed 5-dive day and the end of the Nekton Rorqual cruise. That night was our picture competition. Anybody could submit three pictures and the audience would "vote out" picture by picture until a couple of finalists are determined. I submitted the picture of the eagle ray, the one with juvenile yellow stingray and the one of the reef shark. I ended up being a finalist, but I did not win :(. I did end with the satisfaction, though, that I was able to record unique encounters that not everybody was able to have. With that thought, I headed to bed.

The ship was already anchored outside Georgetown port, which for the last night, was kind of lame. I would have preferred a more "remote" dive site for the last night dive.