Living in Grand Cayman

Here in Cayman, it is no secret that the sun is abundant. In fact, we get over 300 days of sunlight a year. If one were to think of the best way to produce energy, solar seems like a no brainer!

However, its not that simple. Due to costs of importing the hardware and installation, solar and other renewable energies have been slow to catch on.

Here are some great examples of generating energy without burning any fossil fuels that I have found while driving around and in the local media.

Here in South Sound, this person has setup a large array of 84 solar panels. According to an article in the local newspaper, this setup can generate enough power for 3 homes. Here is the link to the article for further reading:

http://www.caymannetnews.com/article.php?news_id=17293

Now in West Bay, this new condo building, which also houses DiveTech, a local dive shop has solar panels and also a lovely Skystream windmill. This complex boats that excluding the use of air conditioning, it is completely self sufficient for power. In the picture below you can see the solar panels on the roof.

Here is the skystream windmill, which sits right next to the ocean. When I went there, it was turning at a medium pace. It was very silent.

Gotta admit, it even looks great!

Now if only the cost of these panels & other equipment could go down! Would be amazing if every house had panels on the roof. Lower utility bills and cleaner air for everyone.

I recently completed the Advanced Open Water diving certification. It’s basically the second step after the Open water certification.

The class was a blast ; it’s basically reading a book and doing 5 supervised dives. Each dive has a different objective. We did the following : Deep (100ft), wreck (saw the wreck of the Oro Verde), Night (dove after sunset …), Navigation (swimming around with a compass) and observation (swimming around and looking at stuff). I highly recommend this class to anyone considering it. I also met some great people and now have some new dive buddies.

During one of the dives, someone spotted a Lionfish and it was captured. In a nutshell, Lionfish are an invasive species and they are infesting reefs all over the Caribbean. It is widely believed that a ten years ago or so, a handful of these fish were accidentally released into Biscayne Bay in Miami and have since reproduced and migrated all the way to Cayman. Apparently, the lionfish are a huge problem in the Bahamas.

The problem is that they are indigenous to the pacific and have few Atlantic/Caribbean predators. Also, they are voracious eaters ; they eat three times their weight daily! Thus, a campaign in ongoing to cull them. Although eradication is impossible, minimizing the spread is the key.

Here is a baby that was caught while on one of the certification dives.