New to Diving. Going to Cozumel and Grand Cayman.

[simcoediver]

You say you will be doing your open water dives in the Niagara River & Lake Erie, if you do well in those dives you will be fine and confident anywhere you go. However I am surprised you are doing your OW dives in the Niagara, thats a very strong current dive, much more powerful and faster than Cozumel. I love diving the Niagara river, its an awesome ride!

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Thanks. I will have at least 4 open water dives by feb 2018. If I can manage to do it, I would like to take the advanced course before I go as well. One step at a time.

Before diving Cozumel I would hope you would be closer to 400 dives than 4. Strong current, surfacing around several moving boats and depths well beyond your experience are a lot scarier than sharks.

 

[diversteve]

On Cayman the Carnival cruise operator is Don Foster's. They generally use large boats and dive pretty benign sites. There's also 3-4 other options in Georgetown near the port, Deep Blue, Wall to Wall or Lobster Pot at Lobster Pot Dive Center - a short walk north of the cruise port, Off the Wall in the same area or Diver's Down which you'll get to first walking north - IDK anything about them.

Two "signature" dives on Cayman are the Kittiwake wreck or Stingray City - a 60' tall wreck in 70' of water. As a new diver you'll be limited to exploring the upper decks where they've cut huge holes in the hull so you pretty much always see the way out. And there will a DM in the water with people of your experience level - it's the rules there.

SRC is a dive/feeding opportunity with the Rays - in 15' of water for 45mins. Lots of fun. I'm reliably sure no one has ever gotten hurt there except when the rays "persuade" you to drop the squid. Deep Blue is one out of Lobster Pot Dive who should be diving it in 2018 - Deep Blue Divers – Take a trip to Stingray City in Grand Cayman There may also be a descendant of "Psycho" the Moray Eel in a coral patch nearby. Harmless but 1/2 blind so don't get too close. If your ship sells Sandbar trips - that's a snorkel only nearby. Sometimes both get called Stingray City.

Dish may not be aware of this but Eden Rock was damaged earlier this fall - a container ship scraped 150' of reef clean. And collapsed one of the caverns. It's not something they can fix so IDK how the diving is there now - it wasn't great to begin with after decades of cruise traffic (500' from the cruise tender dock.

Also there's a plan to build a cruise pier on Cayman - approved but I"m not sure of the construction progress by 2018. One plan I've seen shows Eden Rock covered over by it - also the dredging in going to silt over (and kill) the coral. Georgetown may look a lot different by 2/18. Both are pretty benign dives generally around 40' or less. The big silver fish in the Grotto are Tarpon and have virtually no interest in you. They'll likely let you get fairly close though.

I wish I'd seen a shark on Cayman's west side. And we dove there every day for a week. It's a pretty cool thing when you do see one and none of them consider you as prey - you're bigger than most and make weird bubble noise. Lately a few may check you out hoping you're a lionfish culler and have a snack for them but that's mostly on the far east north wall or east side - neither location that you'll get to off a cruise ship.

Lastly if you're in port all day, the afternoon boats tend to do shallower dives. Around 1pm so if you're sailing around 4-5pm. it's an option. One thing to ask any operator doing a deeper 1st morning dive is what you'll see if you stay shallower instead. Some sites can be just as good at 40-60' (depends on the mooring/wall location) at others you'll be swimming in blue water watching the other divers 30' below you - not nearly as much fun...

 

[diversteve]

Cayman has a forum here as well. Cayman Islands

Also this question gets asked/answered a lot in our Cruise forum. Cruises

 

[Dish]

Dish may not be aware of this but Eden Rock was damaged earlier this fall - a container ship scraped 150' of reef clean. And collapsed one of the caverns. It's not something they can fix so IDK how the diving is there now - it wasn't great to begin with after decades of cruise traffic (500' from the cruise tender dock.

diversteve-
I had heard that some nautical buffoonery had taken place there, but was unaware that it had affected Eden Rock. That's very sad news, indeed. We're heading back in April and I'll probably dive it anyway to see the damage first hand. The cruise/container boat pier is whole different debate. I'm just glad that I was able to dive those sites before they are destroyed.

Cayman has a forum here as well. Cayman Islands

Thanks for that. I found the "Saga" thread. This was indeed a very recent disaster.

 

[CassieNYC]

I've done about half of my 28 dives in Cozumel, including eight in December. I would highly recommend hiring a private dive master. Then be clear about the max depth you are willing to go to. The private DM means you do not need to keep up with the group, although we practiced that. He or she can also help you learn to manage in the current, which can be pretty noticeable . He or she can also be the person putting up the surface marker buoy at the end of the dive to make surfacing in busy areas safer.

We saw a number of nurse sharks on the dives in December. They are very cool. They have also generally been pretty mellow. On one dive they were a bit amped up because someone in a nearby group speared a fish and fed it to one of them. Even then they weren't aggressive towards us, just moving faster and closer than I had seen before.

We also saw a seahorse and got to swim with some turtles -- it was some good diving.

 

[500 PSI]

Probably my lucky day. Dove the east shore in mid March after winds died down. Our dive group was surrounded by a school of least 12, six to eight+ foot nurse sharks moving in from deep water onto the reef . Awesome GC dive.

 

[mi000ke]

While most of the dive ops on grand cayman do a first dive on the wall at about 100' not all do, so your best bet would be to email several of the ops operating near the cruise terminal (a search here on cayman will bring up tons of info) and ask if they could accommodate you from the cruise ship on two dives no deeper than 60'. (BTW, I have done several Caribbean cruises, and rather than use the cruise line excursion,we always contact several ops in each port long before we arrive to arrange our dives.)

When I first dove Cayman I also was only OW certified and was reluctant to do a 100' dive having not been below 70' on my 20 or so previous dives. A couple of the ops said I could just follow along at 60', but that would essentially make me a solo diver and that was not acceptable. Anyway, I found a dive op that agreed to take me on three days of 60' and shallower dives. So again, contact a few and explain what you are looking for.

And with about 20 Cayman dives now under my belt (and my AOW cert) I have yet to see a shark.

And just last week I finally got to dive with a nurse shark off West Bay. She (he?) swam with us following us like a dog, and as we hovered the shark would swim just under each of us as though looking to be petted (which some of use did). Swam with the same shark (can tell by a scar on the side of its mouth) again this past week. Very cool.