Grand Cayman is known for it's fantastic wall diving, healthy reefs, world class shore diving, excellent macro marine life and often with cobalt calm seas! There are 270 named dive sites with warm water and generally great visibility year round.
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Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands and one of the more developed diving locations in the northern Caribbean. The island’s main port, Georgetown, is a stopping point for several major cruise lines every week of the year.
The largest beach, Seven Mile Beach, runs the length of the island’s leeward side and is home to several luxury resorts as well as a number of bars and restaurants. Visitors can take the half hour drive around the entire island ending at Rum Point where they will find a much more secluded beach with a quiet atmosphere and wade several hundred metres out into the crystal clear waters of the sound. Although most famous as a haven for offshore banking, Grand Cayman also offers every amenity for the perfect holiday!
Because Grand Cayman is the peak of an underwater mountain, this island is best known among divers for its incredible walls. All four sides of the island offer vertical locations that start at ten to twenty metres and plummet into the abyss. Most of these sites will have large cracks and swimthroughs that allow divers to enter at the edge and emerge several metres down the face. Grand Cayman’s walls explode with hard and soft corals and are covered with crabs, lobsters and other benthic creatures. Hammerhead sharks are often seen cruising up and down. This island is also famous for its very own Sting Ray City where you can feed hundreds of the largest southern rays found in the Caribbean.
In the Caribbean and Atlantic, Grand Cayman has been honoured with the following for 2013:
#1 Best Wall Diving
#1 Best Advanced Diving
#1 Best Rebreather Diving
#3 Best Overall Diving
#3 Best Marine Environment
#3 Best Macro & Wide Angle Photography
#4 Best Shore Diving
#4 Best Beginner Diving
#4 Best Wreck Diving
Marine Conservation
The people of the Cayman Islands understand the importance of maintaining a healthy underwater environment and have taken great care to preserve the treasures of the deep for future generations. Cayman established Marine Parks 30 years ago and are now in the process of doubling the size of the Marine Parks, because these programs work on a grand scale.
There are strict laws and regulations (Cayman Marine laws) which are designed to protect the quality of water and the creatures that inhabit them.
Climate & Season
The Cayman Islands have a tropical marine climate, which means that temperatures range from 77 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with two seasons: a wet season (1.9 inches /month) and a dry season. True to its climate classification, average annual temperatures in the Cayman Islands is 84 degrees Fahrenheit, and experiences its wet season (occasional afternoon showers) between the months of May and November, and its dry season between December and April.
Grand Cayman has calm-enough to very calm water suitable for diving throughout most of the year. About half the Cayman dive shops go on vacation in September or October however at this time of year there is some of the best diving with big marine life - for example Whale Sharks and Pilot Whales which are migration past Grand Cayman. It is a popular time of year for Upper North American dive groups as their more local weather turns cold.
Ocean temperature lowest in Feb; 78°F (25°C) and in September; 87°F (30°C).
Year Round Events
Pirates Week Diving Festival November 9th - November 21st
Cayman’s Turtle Nest Season May - November
Divers Hall of Fame & Film Festival November 1st - November 15th
Inner Space (world’s largest Rebreather Event) May 15th - May 30th
Other year round Marine life
Silversides season is May – August
Grouper Spawning season November – March
Stingray City Encounters Year Round
Tarpon Encounters Year Round
Lionfish Culling Safari Weekly
Information kindly provided by DIVETECH
Other year round Marine life
Dive Centers
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