Little Cayman · Cayman Islands · Wall
Great Wall West
The wall's most vertical section, photographed piece by piece
Area photo: NOAA Photo Library · CC BY 2.0
The most vertical section of the Bloody Bay wall, on Little Cayman's north side, and the part of the wall that has been documented most closely: in 1999 a crew of photographers shot the face piece by piece to build a single composite image of it. Sections of this wall are so sheer as to be effectively vertical, a rarity, and a planned profile reaches a little over 30 m.
Where it is and how deep
No published position for this site — the map shows Little Cayman and its other sites; operators know the mooring.
Site maps published elsewhere
The dive
This is the sheer end of the wall. Sections of the Bloody Bay face are so vertical as to be a rarity and this is the piece that is most so, a flat face rather than a slope, dropping from the edge of the shallow ground with nothing under it within recreational range. The boat moors over that shallow ground inside the reef and you swim out to the lip.
Diving it is a matter of holding one depth against a surface that gives no reference: pick a level at the edge, run along the face, then come back onto the shallows and finish above the drop. A carefully planned profile here takes a maximum of a little over 30 m and still returns a long dive, because the ground inside the reef is shallow enough to spend the back half of the dive on.
Background
In 1999 the Bloody Bay Wall Mural Project set out to photograph this section of the wall in its entirety. A crew directed by Jim Hellemn shot the face piece by piece and the frames were compiled into a single, highly detailed image of the whole wall; National Geographic reproduced the result in 2001. In 2010 photographers returned to the same section to make a comparison image showing what had changed over the intervening decade.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime |
Season follows Little Cayman: Calmest conditions and best visibility run December through April; September–October bring the greatest hurricane risk.
Know before you go
- A vertical face gives no bottom and no depth reference to stop a slow sink; fix a target depth before you drop and check the computer at a set interval.
Dive videos
Little Cayman Great Wall West - Turtle · Alans Saltwater Scuba on YouTube
MSD Dive Little Cayman 2013 - Great Wall West · MNDiving on YouTube
Sources
- Little Cayman — Wikipedia
- Marine Parks Brochure - Sister Islands — Cayman Islands Department of Environment
In The Logbook
- Why things look bigger underwaterOcean science · 12 min read
- The best wall dives in the worldWalls & drop-offs · 11 min read
More dive sites in Little Cayman
Wall
A lip at 5.5 m over a face that falls away effectively vertical
Wall
A chimney from 24 m that exits onto the reef top at 9 m
Similar dives elsewhere
An undercut amphitheater in the wall, lipped with black coral
A sloping wall dived between 18 m and 34 m
Near-continuous schools of grunts and snappers on the wall top
Overhanging cliff hung with black coral trees and deep-water gorgonians