West Bay, Grand Cayman, Ilhas Cayman

Doc Polson Wreck

The Doc Polson is a small artificial-reef wreck on Grand Cayman, a steel cable-laying barge that was scuttled in 1982 off the West Bay end of Seven Mile Beach to create a dive attraction. The wreck sits upright on a flat sandy bottom in roughly 18 metres of water, with the highest point reaching to about 14 metres. After more than four decades on the bottom the hull is heavily encrusted with stony corals, sponges, gorgonians and hydroids, and has fully integrated into the reef ecosystem. Resident species include green moray eels living in cracks in the hull, schools of grunts, schoolmaster snapper, sergeant majors, queen and French angelfish, blue tangs, the occasional Atlantic spadefish, hawksbill turtles, Caribbean reef squid hovering above the deck, and large lobsters tucked under the hull plates. The wreck makes an excellent second dive paired with a deeper West Wall morning dive. Visibility on the West Bay sand flats regularly exceeds 20 metres, and the protected leeward conditions keep current near zero year-round.