Little Cayman water temp.

[smokey braden]

hello,
will be at LCBR in a week.
looking forward to some wall diving.
can anyone down there now share what the average water temp is?
last year we dove just in our skins.
needing less weight is always nice.
thank you,
smokey

 

[AggieDiver]

The last readings I saw from the CCMI buoy were right around 86F at the end of July. Should be in that same range through most of August and early September.

 

[smokey braden]

AggieDiver,
thank you for the quick reply.
being restricted to how much weight to fly with I like the option of drying out my wetsuit the last few days of the trip.
smokey

 

[AggieDiver]

Yeah, I hear you. The last two years, I have been diving there in shorts and a long sleeve rash guard. Don't need much else when it is that warm. Saves me a lot of weight to not even bring a wetsuit. This year we downsized our 17yr old sea quest BCs in favor of aqualung zumas. That should come close to countering the increased weight of a 2nd camera rig now that we have my wife's dslr in a housing.

 

[jdcpa]

It was 86 degrees two weeks ago.

A few spots it was 84 in the morning.

 

[wildbill9]

84 every dive and just got back Wed. Leave wet suits....leave dive skins...if icould have left my suit behind i would have. Incredible trip...1600 pics! Wish we were there right now. Contact me if you have any questions or concerns Bill

 

[shrkdive]

I'm here now and saw 87 degrees today at 100 ft. I wore a shortie my first dive but have not worn it since. It is plenty warm enough.

 

[jlevitt]

Dive temp sounds magnificent. But a question -- is Little Cayman mostly wall diving, or mostly reefbed?

 

[AggieDiver]

We had 86 all week last week with occasional swirls of 84 coming in off the wall at times.

jLevitt, the beauty of Little Cayman is that it is both on most dive sites. At most of the sites on the north side of the island, you can get a wall dive and finish on a shallow reef on the same dive. There are actually two sections of the Bloody Bay Marine Park. The Bloody Bay Wall section has nearly vertical walls starting in as little as 18 feet of water with a hard pan reef in the shallows. The Jackson's Bight section has a deeper top to the main wall 35-45', and inner mini wall, and a wide sandy boulevard separating the two. I personally love the Jackson's Bight section because you can do a wall dive, a sand/rubble dive, and a shallow reef dive all from the same mooring. You almost always get to do your safety stop looking around the reef near the boat...there are very few sites where you end up doing an open deep water safety stop.