What dive sites are affected by enhanced marine areas?

It’s great that the Cayman government and the Department of the Environment plan to significantly expand and enforce the protected marine areas and increase the no-fishing and no-diving zones. I am a diver and will be sorry to lose access to some sites, but it is vitally important to protect this precious natural resource – and there will still by many beautiful spots to dive around the Cayman Islands! But I am finding it difficult to read and interpret the maps released by the DoE with the overlapping protected zones. Cayman 27 News recently reported that ten Cayman dive sites will close and a couple of site names were mentioned, but as far as I can tell there has been no complete list of dive site closures published. Most divers seem to support the new protected areas but there’s a lot of speculation going on about which sites will actually be closing. Can you provide a list of the names of dive sites that are proposed for closure under the new plan?

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Auntie’s answer: As you note, the DoE has included a map and an explanation of the enhanced marine protected areas but the names of the ten affected dive sites were not included.

However, they have now published additional maps with the names of the dive sites affected, which we have added to the CNS Library. See here.

For now, though, the sites remain open as Cabinet has approved the changes but it will be a few more months before they take effect.

The nine dive sites affected on Grand Cayman are:

• 13 Trees
• Victoria’s Secret
• Darvin’s Theory
• Lost Treasure Reef*
• Cayman Crossing
• Ned’s Tunnels
• Lost Wall
• Max’s Garden
• Christopher’s Wall

*Note that Lost Treasure Reef is hard to see on the DoE map (in the CNS Library) because it is written in yellow, where all the others are written clearly in red. This site is closed to diving but is open for line-fishing.

The single dive site affected on Little Cayman Cayman is:

• Blacktip Tunnels

The new protected areas do any affect any publicly moored named dive sites off Cayman Brac.

Send questions to auntie@caymannewsservice.com

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Tags: Cayman Islands Marine Parks, Dive sites

Category: Ask Auntie, Environmental Questions