 Cayman Diving
Elliott Goldstein wrote:
> yes, but little cayman did not take a hit like grand cayman did. i am
> also wondering what the beaches on the south side of grand cayman looks
> like.
Based on the early post-storm photo's, I'd expect the beaches to be
still fairly "torn up", which for the Southside would probably mostly
mean depleted of sand in those areas that had marginal sand coverage
over the ironshore & rock rubble...I had been watching the sandy areas
on Cayman Brac slowly recover from Gilbert (1988) for the past decade+,
as the natural sand replenishment there has been a slow process (ditto
for shallow water staghorn & elkhorn corals on the southside).
IIRC, they had been doing pretty extensive reef recovery operations off
Grand Cayman's southside back in 2004/2005 ... pulling cars out of the
shallow reefs, etc, that had been deposited there from the storm surge.
I believe that for the most part, this work's been completed for a
year.
I was able to spend a few hours on Grand Cayman in Dec 04 (2.5 months
after Ivan) and found that the west side (7mi beach) area's sand looked
essentially unscathed to casual observation...although whatever sand
that was dislodged would have migrated to smother shallow reef. On
Little Cayman, there was pretty significant sand movement in the
tunnels at depths of 60fsw, so I'd expect similar (or more) on Grand,
as well as smothered shallow coral.
However, since it has now been two years, much of this will be not
particularly noticable, as there's been sufficient time for algae to
grow on exposed areas and make them blend in, and smothered areas are
gone anyway. Ditto the soft corals and sea fans, as two years of
"composting" will have had its effect.
Best bet is to look to the dive operation in question. At the very
least, they will have lost their docks (pretty much everyone did, all
the way out to the Brac), so you can look for website photos of their
current facilities.
-hh | 
