For many, diving involves casually exploring reefs, admiring corals and snapping photos of exotic fish, but the Central Caribbean Marine Institute on Little Cayman offers divers a chance to explore with a more definite purpose.

The institute runs a Dive with a Researcher programme, which gives divers an opportunity to learn more about coral reef conservation while helping collect and archive data.

“Our Dive with a Researcher programme is for anyone who has always dreamed of being a marine scientist for a day, or in this case, a week,” explains Brenda Gadd, the institute’s director.

“It is for that CEO or president who has achieved it all and is looking for a new thrill, a new challenge. It is for that adventurer who is stuck in a rut and considering a lifestyle change or a career change,” she says, adding that taking part in the programme opens participants’ eyes to a whole new underwater world. “One week with our scientist and you will never approach scuba diving quite the same way again.”

The programme has attracted interest locally and from the UK and the United States.
For those who cannot spend a full week with a researcher, the institute also runs mini courses where divers spend a long weekend accompanying scientists underwater.

Upcoming programmes include a study of coral bleaching, an underwater forensics course and an investigation into why Little Cayman’s reefs are not dominated by algae, like other reefs in the Caribbean.
The institute, based at the Little Cayman Research Centre, is also running a programme in which divers will search for invasive species.

They will look for lionfish, an invasive species capable of eating vast quantities of juvenile fish, crab and shrimp, which pose a threat to the biodiversity of Caribbean reefs, and mat tunicate, an encrusting organism that appears to be increasing in numbers in Little Cayman. The latter has been shown to reduce live coral cover by 40 per cent in other Caribbean locations.

Participants stay at the Research Centre next to Bloody Bay Marine Park on the north shore of the island. Accommodation and all meals for the one-week research mission are included in the programme.
Divers must be advanced open water certified with at least 50 dives logged.

To register, visit reefresearch.org.