Little cayman is not an untouched dive destination but is one of the best dive places in the caribbean. In general, the reefs are not in as good of shape as say Bonaire but much better than grand cayman, Provo, and cozumel. If you are into the diving experience rather than the shopping, tons of tourists, fancy hotel, and nightlife scene go to LC, Cayman Brac or Grand turk.
In any destination where there's people, there are going to be some reefs that get 'beat up', or otherwise "loved to death". The question is how to rate the overall destination, as opposed to the very best (or worst) of that place versus another.
Specific to Little Cayman, the famous Bloody Bay Wall section is under stress and diver pressure, and there have been proposals to remove 50% of the current moorings to allow for the reef to have a chance to recover.
The general history of diving on LC is that the Cayman Aggressor first started to visit there in 1984, and Gladys Howard established Pirate's Point in 1986, of which employees Donna & Paul Ingles were two of the originators of the current mooring system, which I personally know was in place and in use by no later than 1989 (my first trip to LC dive sites). The LCBR opened in 1993 and doubled the number of hotel rooms on the island, which increased the number of dives being conducted in Bloody Bay by IMO at least 33%-50%
As such, we need to keep in mind that these famous dive sites have been dived
continuously now for 20+ years without any relief, when trying to determine if they are 'better' or 'worse' than some other reef someplace else. Personally, I've seen the decline firsthand and wish for the "old days", but the reality is that BB is probably going to continue to be overdived until such time that the economy gets horrifically bad and half the current resorts go out of business...or that Cayman Environmental protection finally does the unpopular move of biting the bullet and finally closing down the 11 moorings that they proposed back in 2006 and enforce a rest period.
Partly because I've been to BB so many times, I've been actively seeking "less famous" dive sites on LC, which have the dual benefit of being new/different (to me) as well as being less impacted by divers. I can tell you firsthand that there's some really neat .. and nearly virgin .. reefs on LC (
better than anything I've ever found on Bonaire..but my personal preference is for wide angle, so Bonaire's strengths in macro isn't my primary appeal), but in any case, LC's problem is that most people will never go there because most visitors (particularly first-timers) very specifically want to go to the specific dive sights touted as "the best" by various magazine articles and so forth...which merely perpetuates the diver pressure problems at those sites: its a Catch-22.
Bonaire has the same problem, but with fewer 'highly famous' sights, there's less diver concentration...the overall impact ends up being more spread out.
IMO, your best bet of more virgin diving is always going to be at a smaller dive operation, preferably with the diveboat "stacked" with your own group so as to be more able to request the dive site. In general, the more experienced the crew is, once they're confident in your group's diving abilities, the happier they'll be in trying new sites. Last year, I got to dive the Little Cayman Bluff's dropoff ('Blacktip Tunnels ' mooring:
19 42.890N, 79 57.488W) and also a hook drop along the north side, east end...(provisional name was "Queen's Castle", due to part of the wall's toplogy being like the crenellated structure like a classical castle wall, and over a dozen Queen Triggerfish at the site); I'll have to dig up its GPS coordinates.
-hh
