Living in Grand Cayman

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a presentation to 300 high-school students. As some of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I work in the IT field.

The presentation was to inform them about the risks they face online when using the Internet.  From cyber predators to scammers, to spam and online gaming.  I also discussed how anyone can be filmed at almost anytime (such as at the beach) and that if they do something they regret, it could be uploaded before they know it! Its especially true now that almost all cell phones have a camera & video capabilities.

Its a dangerous world out there, and not just for teens. A reporter form a local paper assisted the presentation and made a lovely writeup about it,  It can be found at the link below.

http://www.compasscayman.com/observer/observer.aspx?id=8152

In the past years, there were have been a few “turtle releases” done by the local turtle farm.  However, due to hurricanes and also low fertility of their turtle population, none had been done in the past two years.

A few weeks ago, such an event was planned on seven mile beach. I of course attended. 🙂  Ten 1-year old turtles were released by members of the public. Approximately 200+ people showed up for the event. I managed to get “front row seats”.

Here are some pictures of the event.  The first one will give you an idea of the crowd that gathered. May be more than 200. In any case, someone driving by must have thought that some rock star was giving a free concert! 🙂

Here go two of them.

This one made it to the water. The “carriers” would put the turtles down on the sand and let them make it into the water themselves.

This one swam very close to me.

Swimming away to freedom! As you can see, there were even people in the water hoping to catch a glimpse of these lovely animals.

As a note, turtles are protected in Cayman. It is illegal to catch/kill any. Those that are caught face jail time.  When I go diving, I often see turtles swimming around, so I think that although the population is not huge, it does seem to be doing well.

Final note: One one day of hurricane season remaining. 0 storms this year, not even a near-miss.  IDA was the closest and was never a threat.

Just a quick post to mention that  we are monitoring a system forming near Panama. It looks just like Paloma did almost exactly one year ago.  See the comparison below.

Paloma last year …

The new system we are watching and potential paths.

Its been a very quiet season so far, lets hope it stays that way!

In the last few months, I have really taken to scuba diving.  Recently, I had the opportunity to dive on the east end of Grand Cayman. The diving is great.  Less dive boats, great coral reefs and lots of fish/wildlife.

We also saw two medium sized reef sharks.  These animals are gorgeous.  They were not at all interested in us and just gracefully swam by us.  No aggression or any hint that it would want to harm us.  So beautiful.

Here are some pictures. To be honest, most of these I have no idea what they are.  They sure were pretty though! 🙂

This was amazing!  There was a school of thousands of small fish.  When swimming though, I was basically blinded, since all I could see were the fish. I could not see at all where I was going. Very cool.

This shark is about 7ft long by my estimates. It is a Caribbean reef shark. It was about 30-40ft away from us.

Unfortunately shark populations around the world are being depleted. Here in Cayman I have not seen many.  In many parts of the world, they are being caught and “finned”.  I have not heard/seen any of this here, which is good.

Basically their fins are cut off and then they are tossed back into the ocean to die at the bottom since they are no longer able to swim. Quite barbaric 🙁  Their fins are used to make … soup! I recommend you watch Sharkwater. Its a documentary that I watched recently and that moved me a lot.  I promise you will never see sharks in the same light once you see this documentary.  The official site is www.sharkwater.com. On the main page you will see the trailer which will gve you an idea of what this is all about. The entire documentary is available on Youtube (in 9 parts) The first part can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vog3z1NsMYU

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.