Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the North Sound of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. It is a tourist attraction, as southern stingrays are found in abundance and visitors can feed, pet, and interact with the animals.
At Stingray sandbar, which is only waist deep, you can use a mask and snorkel and watch the rays swarm around you, brushing their velvety bellies against your hands and feet. This is the rays' way of begging for food. The rays have no teeth, but use a powerful sucking motion to draw in their food. Some nearly six-feet in diameter. Their only means of defense is a barbed tail.
Location
Stingray City is in the shallow waters of the northwest corner of Grand Cayman's North Sound. It is just inside a natural channel that passes through the barrier reef and consists of a string of sandbars crossing the North Sound from Morgan Harbor to Rum Point.
Stingray City and a second site near Rum Point Channel called Sandbar were featured on television documentaries and seen as underwater advertising backdrops.
History
It may be that the stingrays began gathering in the area decades ago when fisherman returned from an excursion, navigated behind a reef into the sound, and cleaned the fish in the calm water of the shallows and sand bar area. The fish guts were thrown overboard and the stingrays eventually congregated to feast on the discarded guts. Soon the stingrays associated the sound of a boat engine with food. As this practice turned into a tradition, divers realized that the stingrays could be fed by hand.
The site was first noticed about twenty years ago, when North Sound fishermen came to the calmer, shallower waters just over the reef to clean their fish. Soon they noticed stingrays, scavengers by nature, hanging around the boats inhaling any leftovers they could get their suckers on. Next, some particularly brave dive masters got in the water to hand-feed them, and before long the stingrays had become tame, almost pet-like. This tourist hot spot gained popularity when Skin Diver magazine reported on the activities in 1987. Today, you can swim under, over, and along with the rays. Their favorite food is squid, which you can feed them by hand.
Getting There
Each access method involves a short boat ride to the sandbar area at the North Sound:
- A snorkeling trip, which has been called the best snorkeling experience in the world. This trip normally occurs in the heart of the sandbar where the water is only 3 to 5 feet deep.
- As a SCUBA diver. Dive groups consist of ten to twenty divers, wearing no fins as they may hurt the congregating stingrays. The divers are over-weighted, which keeps them on the bottom. The dive master swims between divers dispersing diced squid and fish pieces. Stingrays quickly surround them.
- Using a glass bottom boat, an alternative if the weather is too windy for snorkeling.
Source: Wikipedia