INDEPENDENT DIVE OPERATORS ON GRAND CAYMAN

Travel to any heavily dived location and you’ll quickly discover what a “cattle boat” is—a big dive boat that takes scores of divers out to a single spot. Save some of the snorkel operators that cater to cruise ship passengers, most of the dive operators on Grand Cayman have medium-sized, comfortable boats and don’t pack them like they do elsewhere. But, if you’re the type of person that really likes personal attention and getting to know your crew and other passengers, there are several independent dive operators on Grand Cayman who offer just that.

We stumbled across Divers Down, one of five well-established, but independent dive operations on Grand Cayman, sort of by accident. The Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, who helped us find our way around, arranged for us to dive the North Wall on one of Divers Down’s 42 foot boats. Our divemaster and captain, Dario, explained to us why he preferred to work for an independent operator, and we quickly realized why we preferred to dive with them.

“When people hear that we’re independent, they're not sure what to expect ,” Steve Surrey, the owner of Divers Down, tells us.

Surrey, used to work for one of the big operators, and realized that there was a demand for better, more personal service. Tourism in the Caymans was booming, especially diving tourism, and Surrey built Divers Down into a successful business. He now has a team of divemasters operating 4 boats.

Steve was quick to point out that he was not the only person to break off from one of the big operators and start his own company. In fact, there are several other well established, independent operators including Wall to Wall Diving, Red Baron Divers, Neptune's Divers, Dive ‘n Stuff, and Off the Wall Divers.

“You’d expect that we’d all be in stiff competition with each other,” Surrey says, “but we really all work together. We look after each other’s operations. It’s how we compete with the big guys. It’s also why we have so much fun!”

When we got all the partners of these operations together to take a picture, it became clear that there is no hostility amongst them. In fact, as they stood there smiling for our camera, they mumbled cracks at one another under their breath—they seem a lot more like old friends than competitors.

Diving with an independent operator also gives your more flexibility in terms of where you’ll go and when. Any of these operators will find a way to get you wherever you want to dive. They’ll make sure that you’re not diving somewhere you dove the day before, but will eagerly take you back somewhere you want to dive a second time. That level of accommodation is difficult to find anywhere, and was certainly welcomed by our team as we struggled to see as much of underwater Grand Cayman as possible.