LITTLE CAYMAN Trip ReCAP 2023
Bluewater Travel'S Underwater GOPRO VIDEO Workshop
Trip report words by Todd Kortte, Images & videos by Todd Kortte & Guests
You can’t ask for much more when you are staying at a dive resort like the Little Cayman Beach Resort in the Cayman Islands. The entire experience is straight out of a post card. This remote island in the Caribbean is a perfect getaway for any level of scuba diver. 84-degree water, 100+ feet visibility, calm seas, great food, white sandy beaches, coconuts, iguanas….and simple diving with minimal currents that will definitely make you forget about the rest of the world.
The remote island has many wonderful dive sites, and very few dive boats that can visit these sites, so it feels like you have the entire Island to yourself. We logged 17 dives during our week at the Little Cayman Beach Resort. Most of these were along Bloody Bay and Jackson’s Point. The dive sites were only a 20-minute boat ride away from the resort, and the boat rides were just as gorgeous and relaxing as the diving.
The marine life around Little Cayman Island was your typical Caribbean favorites. Schooling grunts, sponges, sea fans, brain coral, friendly Groupers. A typical dive would start off on a wall and end up in the shallow 25-40 feet of water under and around the boat. We had 2 morning dives after a nice breakfast, and 1 dive after lunch. The dives were just as enjoyable and relaxing as the resort.
The squid were the highlight of the week. Normally Caribbean reef squid keep a good distance from you. But we were lucky enough to find a few squid that seemed to like the attention…or maybe their reflections in our lenses. They did not seem shy at all and made for a moment underwater that will not be forgotten. One of our dive masters showed us how to talk to the squid with hand gestures that mimicked the arms of the squid. By curling up a couple fingers, you can spark the interest of the squid. A few of us tried it. I am not sure if it worked or not, but it did seem to catch their attention. Most of the marine life around Little Cayman Island was not shy of divers. The life would let you get within inches of your camera lens.
The wall diving was excellent. Very typical Caribbean walls with large sponges, crabs, lobsters, and an occasional reef shark. One of the most photographed walls in the Cayman Islands is the Great Wall West. A 90 degree drop to 6000 feet deep. The dive master brought us all off the wall to get a good sense of how small we were…and to feel the magnitude and presence of the wall.
Some of the barrel sponges are said to be more than 2000 years old. The redwoods of the ocean. The size of the giant barrel sponges was impressive. Some were larger than refrigerators! Over 6 feet in diameter and/or height. It was unbelievable how large some of them were. To think they have been living in our oceans for more than 2000 years was something to admire and respect.
A 45-minute boat ride from the Little Cayman Beach Resort, on the northwest side of Cayman Brac Island, lies the wreck of the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts. A 330-foot Russian frigate owned by Cuba, and intentionally sunk in 1996 to be made into an artificial reef. The crystal-clear water made for spectacular views of the wreck. The turret guns remain in place and make for great videos. The wreck was ripped in half from hurricane Ivan in 2004. Hurricane season runs from July to November.
Bill Barrett put together this really nice video of the Tibbetts wreck. Bill shot this with an iPhone 7 and a Dive Volk housing.
The Little Cayman week was a GoPro video workshop. Although the focus is on GoPro cameras, the workshop information on underwater video can be used with any video camera. I covered video topics like frame rates, resolutions, ambient light vs video light, color loss, white balance, red filters, camera settings, macro, types of shots that are simple to shoot and easy to edit, editing tips, export settings, social media settings, and how to submit your videos to viral video companies.
I also covered how to use the GoPro QR Codes. These QR codes contain the best underwater settings for the GoPro cameras. You can instantly change camera settings underwater by putting the QR code in front of your GoPro. Switch instantly from Wide, to Narrow, to Slow Motion, Dark Water, and even a Video Lights setting when you find too much red being added into your shot from the auto white balance. Focus on your dive, not your settings.
Video is in demand! Many photographers are simplifying their lives and jumping to video. No matter what your experience, any diver can capture something that has never been seen before and instantly share it with the rest of the world. And there is no easier way to shoot video underwater than with a GoPro. If you are interested in attending a GoPro video workshop, check out our 2024 Fiji underwater Photo & GoPro video workshop.
Behavior shots took the top favorite spots of all the videos from the week. Wyant Lauterman shot a video of a Porcupinefish stuck in the mouth of a Nasua Grouper’s mouth. Bad choice for the Grouper, and you can tell by the look on its’ face that the Grouper knows it made a huge mistake. This can only end in 2 ways. The Grouper dies from suffocation, or the Porcupinefish deflates and the Grouper spits it out. Many of us have heard of this happening, but none of us have ever seen it. Wyant edited a video from the Little Cayman workshop week. For all of you who have never shot and edited a video, you can learn too. This is Wyant’s very first video...
Linda Frederickson shot a nice behavior video of this turtle eating a Fireworm!
Will Kraus found a couple of Caribbean spiny lobsters using a very large and extremely old barrel sponge as shelter. Will Kraus created this video using the GoPro app on his phone. Will is teaching himself DaVinci Resolve at home. Great editing program to learn. One of the best ways to learn an editing program is to search for tutorials on YouTube. Many YouTubers have software how-to videos showing simple editing tips. You can learn easy video editing tricks very quickly.
Young Feng shot a video of a Bar Jack (Skip Jack) eating some scraps flushed out by a stingray. It is common to see Bar Jack follow stingrays to find food. The stingrays tend to scare small marine life as they move along the bottom. The action is a learned behavior for the Bar Jacks. Its an easy way for them to find food.
Hank Kratzer put together this wonderful video from the trip. Hank and his wife Cindy have been reoccurring divers on the GoPro workshops. Please give Hank’s video and all the others a thumbs up on YouTube.
Andrea Bishop created this video from the week at Little Cayman. This video is one of her first edited videos.
last but not least…I have to share John Damas’s hilarious and completely unexpected video of a couple of conches! LOL please watch and enjoy….
