I sink slowly into the warm crystal-clear water. Ten metres below me the reef is a patchwork of colour, an arena of pure white sand surrounded by bulbous outcrops of coral. Pink seafans stand upright in the current, orange seawhips sway gently in the invisible flow, and there against the sand is the lazy dark shape of a fat-bellied Caribbean reef shark. Tucking my arms close against my chest to streamline my body, I move slowly towards it, hoping it will not take flight.
Up close the shark is not black, more a golden brown, its skin shimmering. As it glides past me, I look into the amber sliver of one unblinking eye. It leads me to the edge of the reef: the drop-off. Following the shark feels like stepping off a cliff. The coral is now a sheer vertical wall, dropping into the abyss. This is Bloody Bay Wall, part of a unique ocean reef system surrounding Little Cayman Island, and one of the most thrilling dive sites in the world.
Little Cayman, one of three islands that make up this British overseas territory in the Caribbean Sea, has no rivers and its limestone base means that there is almost no silt or sediment to cloud the offshore waters even after heavy rains. Deep water all round the island also means that currents sweep across the reefs keeping them well-supplied with nutrients.
I first came here to dive in 1999, and was mesmerised by the deep undersea walls. I described the wall at Bloody Bay, and adjoining Jackson’s Bay, as ‘a seductive abyss, the wall covered by sponges, tunicates, black coral, golden crinoids, flame scallops and seafans’. I remember spiny lobsters, groupers, octopuses, turtles, eagle rays and sharks patrolling the wall, plundering the larder of tiny creatures sheltering in the nooks and crannies of the wall. Could it still be as healthy and spectacular eight years on? I feared that it would not live up to my memories.
Diving the wall again makes me feel like an insignificant speck of life. One hundred feet below the surface, I look away from the wall and out into the deep blue. It is a vast empty space like a cloudless sky, a blue chasm that makes me dizzy. I glance back at the coral cliff behind me, as if I could cling to it for support. It stretches away in both directions like the ramparts of some massive undersea city.
Swimming back to its shelter, I marvel at barrel sponges sprouting like so many giant laundry baskets from the reef. Ascending slowly towards the brighter shallows I feel a presence beside me. It is a Nassau grouper perhaps a metre long. The fish shadows me, hoping to use me as cover from which to ambush something for dinner. In most of the Caribbean, the grouper is an increasingly rare sight, a favourite on the tourist dinner menu but here, on Little Cayman, they breed and are protected during the spawning season.
I have dived on dozens of different tropical reefs around the globe. From Australasia, to Africa, from the Arabian Gulf to Indonesia, the sad reality is that the reefs are under threat, mostly generated by humankind. More biologically diverse than the tropical rainforests, the reefs cover less than one per cent of the seabed, yet they may harbour as many as one million species of marine life, the majority of it still unidentified. Yet, marine scientists estimate that around 60 per cent of the world’s coral reefs are seriously damaged or dying.
The threat to coral comes in many forms – pollution, human development, overfishing and rising sea temperatures. Coral polyps, the living surface of the reef, thrive in a narrow temperature band and if it gets too warm they turn white and die. The biology of coral is widely studied but these tiny creatures whose hard skeleton is the building block of the reefs are still in many ways a mystery to scientists.
Not much had changed above water on Little Cayman since my last visit. Iguanas still scuttle for cover on the road as I cycle towards the Southern Cross Club, a small hotel with just a dozen ocean-view suites on the south side of the island. And the beach is still a white carpet of soft sand fringed with palms. The small island (just ten miles long) is home to fewer than 150 residents. People are vastly outnumbered by red-footed booby birds, clustering and chattering on the salt-water pond. In the late afternoon, I watch the boobies returning from their fishing trips out to sea. As they near the shore, stomachs full, they are ambushed by bigger, confident frigate birds, which terrify them into regurgitating their fish catch. The frigate birds are bullies and expert fliers, but they are unable to dive underwater to catch fish of their own.
