Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman, Ilhas Cayman

USS Kittiwake

The USS Kittiwake is the signature artificial-reef wreck of Grand Cayman, a 76-metre former United States Navy submarine rescue vessel (ASR-13) launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1994. After a four-year Cayman government project to clean and prepare the ship, she was scuttled on 5 January 2011 in 20 metres of water on the sandy shelf seaward of Seven Mile Beach. The Kittiwake sits upright on her keel with the bow pointing north, intact and structurally sound, with the highest deck rising to within 4 metres of the surface — making her accessible to snorkelers and freedivers as well as scuba divers at every level. The interior has been opened up with multiple cut-outs and penetration routes through the wheelhouse, machine rooms, mess hall, recompression chamber, crew quarters and wide passageways. The wreck has rapidly become coated in encrusting corals, sponges and gorgonians, and now hosts goliath grouper, large green moray eels, schools of yellowtail snapper, jacks, schoolmaster, sergeant majors, hawksbill turtles, southern stingrays, and frequent Caribbean reef squid. The Kittiwake is a marine park with a permit-only mooring system and is operated by every major Grand Cayman dive shop.