OceanFrontiers-Bad Experience Shore Diving

[ianr33]

This is an unusual post for me,in the past I have always found Ocean Frontiers on Caymans East End to be a pretty much perfect Dive Operation,but I guess there is a first time for everything.........

Two weeks ago a group of five of us arrived on Cayman.We were staying in Old Man Bay at the On The Bay Condos (http://www.onthebay.com.ky/ highly recommended) Plan was to go shore diving around Babylon and Anchor Point. I have dived these areas several times before ,my buddy Brian and myself wanted to do some longer dives on nitrox,me using independant doubles and Brian using a single and slinging an 80 stage. we have done a bunch of dives like this in our local training mudhole,Lake Travis. So far so good

Arriving at Ocean Frontiers on the first day we were told that we could only have one tank each,we explained our plans and the response was that we were lucky to be getting any tanks at all as they were rethinking their policy on shore diving (I had checked on at least 2 occasions prior to arrival that they would have tanks available)

After much pleading they relented a little and allowed me to have 2 tanks (but only because I have a deco card) Brian was out of luck,

To be fair they eased up after that and we got our 2 tanks each,but it left a bad taste. We were diving within our training and and dont see why a dive shop should feel the need to basically censor our dive plan.

Next day we went to Divetech,2 tanks each,no problem,have a nice dive guys !! Guess which end of the Island I stay on next time !!

Has anybody else had problems with OceanFrontiers and shore diving?

Anybody had problems renting more than one tank at once from a shop??

(The dives were great, 100 feet for 28 minutes,endless walls,turtles and even a reef shark. Brian has some pics at http://pics.casadeslug.com/caymans2004 )

 

[Drew Sailbum]

I cannot speak to the policies of Ocean Frontiers, but I can offer a bit of insight to changes in shore diving in East End.

For background, there are three dive shops in the East End district. There is not a dive shop on-site at the sites historically used for shore diving in East End. No real shore diving at the dive shops' locations.

I cannot be certain, but I think that the East End dive operators all obtain nitrox fills from a commercial supplier in Georgetown. I know this is the case with Tortuga Divers. Since this requires substantial time to truck tanks back and forth across the island, it is something that is primarily done as a courtesy for customers scheduling boat dives. It is something which possibly breaks even, but is not a significant profit center. At times it can be difficult to spare the staff for a half day to make the trip.

Times, they are a changing. You probably noticed a lot of new fencing all up and down the Queen's Highway. Local landowners have become increasingly reluctant to permit shore diving access. (While the shoreline up to the high water mark is open to the public, property owners are under no obligation to permit transit across their property to reach the shore.) There have been problems with litter and some problems with people parking on private property.

The two most popular shore diving areas on East End have been Babylon and Anchor Point. Anchor Point is directly offshore of the Barefoot Beach Gardens development. The property owners there installed gates which are kept locked. There is a public access about 200 yards east of the gates (making it about 400 yards east of BBG). The shoal reef reaches quite near to shore there, often making dive entries difficult. This area is marked on some very old maps as Old Dolphin Point.

Babylon is more of a region with four buoyed dive sites. There were four shore entries in this area. A house has recently been built at the most popular entry point for Babylon - shore divers need to respect this private property. One other entry has been posted NO TRESSPASSING. There is one entry which remains, for the time being, accessible. The last entry is in the NO DIVING ZONE, though it is clearly posted as a public access point for swimming.

The East End dive operators must live among and work with the local landowners. So many have clearly expressed wishes that their property not be used for public access to the shore. Any profits to be made by renting tanks has to be weighed against the overall impact on the community at large.

Speaking only for myself, I have noticed that there is relatively little demand for shore diving tanks in East End. We simply do not have the convenience that is available from the various shore diving sites with on-site operators that the west side has.

Finally, a historic note, there was a shore diving accident a few years ago at Babylon which resulted in the death of a staff member from Ocean Frontiers. The incident is still fresh in the minds of all of the East End dive operators and any appearance of plans to do technical diving without suitable support would likely be met with great resistance.

 

[munkispank]

Thanks so much for posting Drew, Often with 'situations' and diving, the whole story is not understood, this can lead to inaccurate opinions of the operation.
Thanks for taking the time.