Eddy's Scuba Blog

Today we woke up in Cayman Brac which is less than 10 miles from Little Cayman. The name "Cayman Brac" comes from the Gaelic word "Brac" that means "Bluff" for the bluff that stands at 140 ft high, which is the highest point in Cayman Brac. This bluff is home for a wide variety of birds like the Red Foot Booby and other species like bats who live in caverns that are more inland.

The plan at Cayman Brac was to do two dives on the wreck of the Capt. Keith Tibbetts Destroyer, have an island excursion in the afternoon and finish the day with a night dive at Radar Beach. Part of the reason for the afternoon excursion was because the Rorqual needed to be resupplied and every guest needed to be out of the boat.

The Only Russian Destroyer in the Western Hemisphere: M.V. Capt. Keith Tibbetts

We started the day with a briefing about the Keith Tibbets, which this time was in the saloon, rather than on the sun deck. We even got a Powerpoint presentation for it. The story of the boat was quite interesting. The Keith Tibbetts was a 330ft. Russian destroyer that was positioned in Cuba. After the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was bankrupt and did not have the money to send the ship back home. So they sent the crew of about 110 officers and sailors home and practically abandoned the ship in Cuba in 1992. It sat in a Cuban port for many years until the Cayman government bought it in order to create an artificial reef. To get a perspective about the magnitude of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the destroyer cost originally 30 millions dollars to build and it was bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars. After the Cayman government bought the ship, they renamed it from "Patrol Ship #356" to "M.V. Captain Keith Tibbetts" after a Brac businessman who was very active in the community.

The Tibbets was sunk on Sep 17, 1996 on the north side of Cayman Brac near Garden Eel Wall. The sinking story is equally interesting. To mark the ocassion scuba celebrity Jean-Michael Cousteau filmed the whole event, and even went down with the ship while it was sinking with the cameras rolling. However, the sinking was not as smooth as planned. Here's a funny account of the Tibbetts sinking by Tucker, one of the Nekton Roroqual's divemasters:

At about 5:00pm, when the Tibbets sunk, it settled right-side up in 90 ft of water with its radar tower reaching 30 ft from the surface. The bridge is in about 50 ft, the bow at 60 ft and the stern (gun turret) in about 50 ft of water.

The stern (back) of the ship is where the biggest gun turret is located. This is the turret you see in many Cayman Island ads. Here's a picture of my buddy Nadine passing by the turret.

We started the dive from stern to bow, the bow was under deeper water (60-80 ft). I took several pictures of the turret. To photograph wrecks I realized that a wide angle lense is desirable. Another challenging aspect of photographing wrecks is that in order to get something within the frame (in this case the turret) one has to be several feet away (in this case, about 10 to 20 ft from the subject). For this reason, a strobe would have very little effect and pictures will have a lot of the "blue" of the ambient light.

Near the bow of the ship there was a sand berm where you could see lots of garden eels. This is where the name of the location "Garden Eel Reef" came from. This is the largest group of ganden eels I've ever seen. Usually they are so difficult to photograph because they would hide once you get too close. In this picture, you at least can see them.

We went around the wreck in a counter clockwise direction starting at the stern. While exploring the starboard (right), I noticed the opportunity to get a picture of the wreck that wasn't blue and dull. There was a yellow tube sponge growing on the wreck. So I decided to get the sponge as the foreground subject and the wreck as the background. I was lucky that a diver was on the background on the right side. I figured that this was "the" way to photograph wrecks.

On the way back to the boat, I heard that Nadine, my buddy had spotted an eagle ray behind the wreck behind the garden eels; however, I never saw it. We had another dive on the wreck, so hopefully we would see that eagle ray again.

Chasing the Eagle Ray by the Keith Tibbetts

On our second dive, my buddy Nadine was dead set in finding that eagle ray again. She even was not interested in the wreck at all. The three of us, Nadine, Rodney and I were the first to go on the second dive. This way we avoided the "crowd". Rodney and I did a quick round around the wreck while Nadine spent most of the time in the sandy area behind the wreck.

By the mid section of the ship, I had another opportunity to perfect my wreck technique of putting something in the foreground with the wreck in the background. This time there was a yellow tube sponge with cleaning gobies. I was again lucky that a diver was in the picture, but not with a good profile. The perspective of the weck, was, however a lot better. You see more depth and portholes along the side of the ship. The stobe was on the left side and above, aiming at the sponge and the fish.

All this time while, Nadine was behind me by the sandy area on the lookout for the eagle ray. In the meantime I was taking pictures of the wreck and look over her once in a while. At one point, I decided that I was done with the wreck and swam slowly to where she was. All of a sudden I noticed her speeding up, it was an eagle ray! The spotted eagle ray was swimming right above the sand. We kicked with all our hearts to keep up with it and managed to get a couple of pictures. I was about 15 ft behind Nadine. At one point the eagle ray was too fast for us and we let it go. Nadine and I looked at each other and we both made a gesture of exhaustion and happiness. We managed to get very close to an eagle ray and here are the pictures to prove it:

After the ardous kicking we decided to start heading back to the boat, but first I hanged out at a nearby coral (head at 40 ft) that had lots of fish around. I spent about 10 minutes taking pictures. I managed to take a good one of a pair of banded butterflyfish which are usually hard to photograph.

We ended the dive that morning at about 11:30am. We were quite happy (an exhausted) with the eagle ray encounter. Afterwards we got ready for the island excursion on Cayman Brac.