Deep Diver Certified in the Cayman Islands
One of my biggest diving accomplishments is becoming PADI Deep Diver certified. It is a different world at a depth of 130ft. There is minimal light, no colorful reef fish, and it feels like a bear is sitting on your chest making it hard to breathe. And sh*t gets real once you descend past 100ft. You get narced (slang for having nitrogen narcosis). But oh, what fun it is!
We decided to go to the Cayman Islands. While planning the trip, I got the idea of completing our PADI Deep Diver certification. Getting certified on vacation is not always fun because all you want to do is relax and party and in reality, you have a good deal of reading/studying to do in order to complete the course.
There are three islands that make up the "Cayman Islands": Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. We stayed in an airbnb on Grand Cayman, right across from 7-mile beach. To save money, we decided not to rent a car (also none of us had experience driving on the left side of the road). So it was important that whatever dive shop that we chose, they would agree to shuttle us from one side of the island to the other. There are a bunch of dive shops all over the island, most of them offering the Deep Diver certification.
The Deep Diver certification allows the diver to dive to a max depth of 130ft, which is the maximum depth of recreational diving. Anything beyond 130ft starts to get into the technical diving world. To be certified, it takes 4 deep dives (and a written test) -- one deep dive from your Advanced Open Water certification can be applied to the certification.
We chose Cayman Diving School on the recommendation of a friend. It was originally owned by Renee Knight, who taught and knows a good friend of mine. Renee was terrific, she picked us up from our airbnb and drove us to the various diving locations. I think she wanted to test our diving skills before taking us too deep, so the first day was a two tank shallow boat dive. The first dive site was at Lone Star Ledges -- 45ft and the second dive was at Killer Puffer at 50ft. Both dives has amazing visibility, you drop down and you can see for 75ft-85ft. Incredible.
Not the best photo but in the bottom left corner of my dive watch, there is an 108, which means my max depth was 108ft.
I guess Renee was comfortable with our skills because the next day we started our Deep Diver Training. Our first deep dive was at Big Tunnels -- 108ft. I had never been past 100ft (33M), the limit of my Advanced Open Water certification, so the first dive to 108ft was exhilarating! Of course, the second boat dive was much shallower and it was a wreck, Doc Poulson -- 45ft. The wreck actually is at a max depth of 65ft, but we kept it shallow at 45ft. The Doc Poulson was scuttled to be an artificial reef off 7-mile beach and it is on the smaller wreck side at 50ft long. But ooh do I love wrecks.
On the third day of diving, and my second deep dive for the course -- we dove Little Tunnels with a max depth of 130ft. We made it! The feeling of being at 130ft was intense. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest -- you could definitely feel the pressure. At that depth it is much darker and there is minimal sea life. I kept looking around for a great big shark, but no luck.
Our second boat dive of the day was one of my favorites -- the USS Kittiwake wreck at a depth of 65ft. It was super cool. They scuttled the ship in 1994 just for divers, so it was safe to go into and explore. It used to be a US Navy Submarine Rescue Ship for 50 years and it is massive at 251ft long. It is really an amazing experience, however it can get crowded since it is a very popular dive site.
USS Kittiwake is at the Northern end of 7-mile beach
Our final deep diver certification day started at Dolphin drop-off to Orange Canyon at 130ft (I pushed it to 131ft). But it was incredible, photo below for proof :)
Our last dive of our trip to the Cayman Islands was at Rainbow Reef at a max depth of 50ft (for us). It had limited visibility at 50-60ft so wasn't the best last dive of the trip, but from all of the others things that we had done and seen, I was satisfied.
Since I have earned my Deep diver certification, I do not regularly dive to 130ft. Most people do not have the certification and so rarely do many people recreationally dive down that deep, especially since it means your bottom time is so short. But after having completed the dive course, I feel more more comfortable and more capable with deep diving. But there is so much more for me to learn!
