Today was another fantastic day of diving in the Cayman Islands on two dive sites the first being called Little Tunnels and the second being called Hunt’s Chute. The first dive was a deep dive down to the wall looking out into the blue which drops into the abyss with reef fish, big predatory fish, and a sea turtle present on the edge. The second dive was a shallow dive with the most amount of coral I’ve seen diving here so far. Hard corals such as star corals and huge brain corals along with hundreds of sea plumes, sea fans, and sea whips. The highlight of my diving today was seeing a massive colony of brain coral the size of a small car that must have been at least 300 years old. I identified it as a brain coral because of its roundish shape and green color with groves that look like the lines of a human brain. What I was wondering as I dove this site was why the corals were so much healthier here than the previous dives I have done. After looking at where we were diving it suddenly made sense. The dive before this dive we were at little tunnels which was right next to where the cruise ships would come in and people wearing non-biodegradable sunscreen would go and swim. With a combination of tourist pollution and runoff pollution from the town it makes sense why the corals here would be struggling more vs the other site which was far away from the tourist area. My evidence of this is because on the first dive near the cruise ships, the algae growth was taking over the corals as the algae grew over bleaching and dying corals and the reef was mostly algae vs mostly coral like at the next site. One specific algae that was completely taking over the corals I identified on a large colony of dead star coral on the edge of the wall known as red crust algae which is identified by its orange red color and the way it grows by encrusting into dying coral colonies and rock. After seeing both dive sites and analyzing the coral growth on both sites and the location of the dive sites relative to people I can conclude that pollution from the towns and people on vacation can have a negative impact on the surrounding ecosystem. My solution to this would be for locals in the Caymans to reduce any sort of unnatural substance going into the ocean and for the ban of non-biodegradable sunscreen on the island. If the these changes were put in place maybe the reefs closer to the town could be healthy like the other reefs I saw today.
