The Road Less Traveled in Cayman

Jonathan Dietz · Issue 51, Nov/Dec 2009 · pp. 55–58

Products mentioned: Nikon D80, Ikelite housing, Ikelite DS-125 strobes, 60mm macro lens, 105mm macro lens, 10.5mm fisheye lens

When you hear of diving in the Cayman Islands, what often comes to mind are the amazing wall dives, the great visibility and Stingray City. If you google ‘Cayman Islands diving’ for images you’ll find that most of the resulting photos will be of Stingray City and reef scenes. I’ve been living and diving in the Cayman Islands for about eight years now and dabbling in underwater photography for six of them. After about 250 dives here, I was getting pretty bored with the normal sights - barracuda, turtles, eels, stingrays, etc. Looking to jumpstart the excitement that I had felt in my early jaunts of diving, I started planning trips to other Caribbean islands that were known for different or more unusual creatures like seahorses, frogfish, nudibranchs, etc. Until relatively recently, I would have sworn that seahorses were extremely rare in the Cayman Islands, nudibranchs were almost non-exi…