Little Cayman: Waves of Water & People

Seven square miles

Silently rising above the Caribbean

Giving life to mangroves and birds of a feather

New life from the death of conch and coral

Expansive reefs

Painted by the brush strokes of purple sea fans

Swept by the tides

And too dangerous for mighty sailing ships

Are comfortable homes to tiny yellow damselfish

Seven square miles with no soil

But yet life has found a way

A paradise to those who yearn for an escape

And a prison to others who need the occasional escape

Waves constantly bombard curving shores

Creating and subsequently destroying

In this way,

The pulse of the waves mirrors your people

As they come

And they go

Destroying. Mixing. Creating.

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Seven Square Miles: Searching for Culture and Celebrating Solitude in Little Cayman

By: Alexander Cotnoir

Seven square miles. That was all the space I could move around in for the next two and a half weeks. Actually, make that closer to six five square miles because the middle of the island of Little Cayman is covered in a thick maze of brackish ponds and thick mangrove swamps. Yes, I recognize that I probably reside within a similarly-sized area for the duration of an entire quarter back at Dartmouth, but with so many different spaces and faces across campus, it never feels challenging to live within a comparatively small amount of land area. Besides, if I wanted to, I could always go for runs far away off campus to my favorite network of trails across the Connecticut River in Vermont, or down by Mink Brook in Hanover. If I want to go hiking off campus or just experience a change of scenery, I could always pile into the car with a group of friends and be off for a weekend adventure in the White Mountains or off towards my favorite peak- Camel’s Hump – over in Vermont. Now I would not have such freedom of choice. I would be living in a bunkhouse with eleven other Dartmouth undergraduates, studying marine biology and reef systems on one of the smallest permanently inhabited islands in the Caribbean – Little Cayman. Yes, I admit that I was extremely excited (and also left the island having had an incredible, once in a lifetime kind of experience!), but I was also nervous and worried. You see, I was preparing myself for an introvert’s nightmare: working and living nearly 24/7 with an entire group of other students on a piece of land that I thought would offer little in terms of solitude and escape.

The entire biology study abroad crew prepares for takeoff as we prepare to fly to Little Cayman. Although I was good friends with all of my fellow classmates, I was extremely nervous to live in such close proximity to so many people during our Caribbean adventure.

I was also nervous as we boarded the tiny plane to fly from Grand Cayman to Little Cayman because I knew we would be entering an environment which offered little cultural interaction. Sure, we would be conducting three awesome independent research projects on subjects ranging from queen conch movement to sponge and coral competition, but with few other permanent residents on the island and no rich cultural traditions depicted in my “Cayman Islands” brochure, I was preparing myself for two and a half weeks of intensive ecology work with little human interaction. My time in Little Cayman was positioned at the very end of my travels abroad (I’d spent a total of four months in different areas around Costa Rica, and three months in South Africa and Namibia at this point), during which I’d come to realize that I greatly enjoy learning about local customs and traditions and talking with locals who were richly intertwined with the local culture. Although I love biology and environmental sciences, I was happy to have recognized during my travels that I need a balance between hard scientific investigation and genuine human interaction to feel happiest. Would Little Cayman be able to supply the latter?

As we glided among the cotton-candy clouds (the type the really fit the description of “billowing”) over the deep blue waters of the Caribbean, I searched the pages of several informational pamphlets about Little Cayman to see what the seven square miles had to offer in terms of natural and cultural features. The island was formed entirely upon the skeletons of dead corals and crushed queen conch shells that had accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years. Mangroves had grown and stabilized the accumulating calcium carbonate with their thick tangles of roots. Over time, brackish pools had formed in the center of the island, providing refuge for a variety of seabird species- including red footed boobies, terns, and frigate birds- and a fringing reef had encircled the island. Today, it was mainly the impressive fringing reefs that drew in tourists and sustained any sorts of human settlement on the island. From the information I gleaned from all the brochures, it appeared as though the island was comprised nearly entirely of small scuba “resorts” nestled along the white coral sand beaches. Only 150 residents lived on the island permanently, and many of these came from neighboring islands to work at the resorts. The island could support no agricultural production because it did not have any real soil. The islands’ residents were supplied by a barge that docked at the northern shore of the island once a week. I felt a bit sad upon hearing this fact. Where was I to encounter Caymanian culture? If all the residents and food seemed to be brought in from other locations, was there really any such thing as a Cayman culture? The front of several of the brochures included a slogan no doubt created by a clever public outreach coordinator for the islands’ tourism industry: “Experience Caymankind”. I wondered however, if there really was any “Caymankind” to experience?

A group photo snapped after we first arrived on Little Cayman. Although I was originally afraid to take time away from the group out of fear that I’d be labelled an outsider, both I and my friends learned to embrace my introverted personality.

After descending through a puff of clouds toward what seemed to be an incredibly small island sitting quietly in the center of a very large sea, we drove the single road that cuts through the island’s center to our new home; Central Caribbean Marine Institute. The facilities themselves were wonderful. We were situated right along the beach where we could watch the waves crashing over the reef, and a homely-looking diving area – cluttered with wetsuits and scuba tanks- gave the area a welcoming appearance. Shortly after our arrival, I flung my clothes onto the top bunk of the men’s bunkroom. I already felt a bit a claustrophobia as the room quickly filled with the odor of five other sweaty Dartmouth students. Back on campus, I’d often find a sense of calm during quiet evenings in my dorm. Here, it seemed as though I would not have this outlet. I was about to come face to face with a part of myself that I had always wrestled with back in the U.S. – I was an introvert amid a sea of extroverts.

I found myself under the “spotlight effect” at school- I always thought that others were watching and judging me more than they actually are. This way of thinking had manifested itself in several domains, from struggles with rationalizing my introverted personality, to finding confidence in trying things that were outside of my ‘comfort zone’.

Prior to my study abroad experiences, I often struggled with being an introvert amid Dartmouth’s overwhelmingly extroverted student body. I’d often find myself keeping a mental tally of the number of nights I ate dinners alone in the dining hall each week, surrounded by hordes of fellow undergraduates accompanied by tables full of friends. I’d often find that the number made me feel a bit sad at the end of the week, although I had often enjoyed my meals all the same. I always felt a similar sense of unhappiness when I thought about what other students were thinking of me in the many instances where I was visibly alone. Whether I was eating a quiet meal out on the green by myself amid circles of friends or studying aside at a table alone in the library, I often felt a little bit strange. Perhaps I just needed to ‘try harder’ to be what most other Dartmouth students are?

But, I must admit that I couldn’t just “make friends” in by simply starting up a conversation in class or by introducing myself to new people at a weekend dance party. When my classmates would talk about all of the social events they’d attended over the weekend and subsequently asked how my days had been, I often felt like I needed to make my stories less about my lone runs in the woods, trips to sketch in Nathan’s Garden, or birdwatching excursions, and more about interactions with groups of friends. In reality, I feel the most alive when I spend time alone or with a single person. Being in social situations all the time leaves me feeling tired and irritable. I needed to hide this side of myself when I was on Little Cayman; at least this is what I’d silently promised to myself. I didn’t want to appear antisocial or as an outsider of the group.

As the days unfolded in Little Cayman, I tried desperately to find energy in being constantly surrounded by my peers. I sat with the group during breakfasts by the water, talking about the project plans for the day ahead and all the cool sea creatures we’d seen the day before. I was happy however during our first few days of exploration when we snorkeled off the boat and from shore at different points around the small island. As the rest of the group funneled along the seagrass beds out among the mounds of brain corals and waving sea fans, I’d often break away from the group and just float among the bobbing waves. I had a blast diving down as far as I could on a breath of air, struggling down and down and down until I was even with the schools of fish. For a brief moment, the world was still, and I was like part of the reef. I could feel the undercurrents gently moving me back and forth like the latticed purple sea fans out in front of me. There were no classmates to be heard; only the small crackling sounds of parrotfishes grinding the surface of the corals with their hard beaks. As I relished these brief moments of solitude, I nearly lost track of how long I’d been down. As soon as my lungs began to burn, I kicked hard with my flippers back towards the surface. As I gasped a breath of fresh air and stopped to clear my mask, my professor was calling in the distance, “Alexander! Please join the group!”

Diving alone to float quietly among the fish and corals was one of the first mechanisms I employed to find peace and solitude.

Underwater photography also became a favorite passtime during our stay at Little Cayman. The calm depths surrounding massive columns of brain corals and waving sea fans created a magical atmosphere.

Soon these daily reef retreats had to come to an end however. Our schedules picked up as our group research projects began and I had to accompany my group partner during our dives to survey coral and fish communities. Soon my classmates and I began turning into nocturnal creatures, staying in the marine lab well after 11pm to work on our papers and data analysis. The amount of time I was spending in their company was beginning to wear me down.

One morning as my classmates filed down from the bunkrooms to the blue picnic table for breakfast, I watched a flock of black frigate birds circling on thermals far at the end of the porch. I wanted nothing more than to sit in silence for a few minutes to just watch the water and these swirling birds, but I was part of the current conversation. “Alexander? What was your embarrassing high school story?” Corinne asked. My attention had drifted just long enough that I had lost track of the conversation entirely. I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed a break. I needed to tell my friends the truth, that I wanted more than anything to actually be alone right now. And so I stood up and said “My apologies for breaking up the conversation guys, but I’ve actually realized I need more time alone in the mornings to feel refreshed for the day ahead. Not that you aren’t all great people. I’m just introverted.”

And so began my new journey on those seven square miles of coral rubble and crushed seashells. In the morning, instead of talking through breakfast and worrying that I wasn’t be included in conversation, I’d wake up early, watch the sunrise over the far side of the island, and then take one of the bikes with a rusted chain for a spin. As I sped off in the morning light, the island felt entirely different from the oppressive heat that characterized the middle of the day. It also felt nice to take a break from the thick wetsuits and pruny fingers we’d have at the end of our dives; to just feel the morning breeze on my skin and look at the island without my snorkeling mask on. Everything felt clearer, and I began to appreciate my time spent on the small island even more after these excursions. But I don’t think it was entirely because I wasn’t wearing a thick wetsuit or a fogging mask. It was because I had recognized what brings me energy- what makes me tick. Finding a sense of solitude on the island was being true to myself.

In the evenings, I adopted a similar tactic to find moments of solitude. I’d take off down the road peddling as fast as I could, listening to Scott Hamilton’s smooth jazz through my headphones as I tried to beat the sun to the dock where the supply barge anchored. The challenge that lay before me- beating the sun before it entirely dipped below the horizon line of the sea – always made me joyful and think back to all the times I’d raced the clock to pedal from my grandfather’s to my own house down the back roads of Vermont. No, I didn’t compete against a group of friends during these races because I liked filling the role of both the competitor and the competition. Again, I enjoyed doing things on my own just as much as I enjoyed my times among friends. After I’d watch the blazing ball of fire sink into the sea and listen to the crabs crunching over the leaves of the small grape trees in the dark, I’d continue around the far end of the island to a small lighthouse. I’d spend the remainder of the evening under the tiny pulsing light, wondering what animas swimming in the now moonlit water under the waves rolling out at sea.

One of many radiant sunsets I watched from the far shore of Little Cayman. During my morning and evening breaks from the rest of the group, I found myself gaining more energy and becoming a happier version of myself. I came to value the time I spend alone even more while living on Little Cayman, as I was able to overcome my fear of what others thought of my personality.

Through my morning and evening bike excursions, I came to terms with my introverted personality. I recognized that although I will always find going to parties and other structured social events exhausting and speaking with others for extended periods of time overwhelming, it’s not something that should hinder how I define my self worth. By living on a seven square mile island situated 311 km south of Cuba and 133 km northeast of Grand Cayman, I came to greatly appreciate all the time I spent alone and took time away from friends to relax and reflect. Being on a program where I could not physically leave the proximity of my professors and 11 fellow undergraduates for extended periods of time made me come face to face with the reality that moments of solitude are invaluable experiences. I found myself feeling increasingly stressed, more irritable, and less creative when I didn’t take the time to step away from the group and go sit by myself. By coming face to face with the challenges imposed by living in close quarters with my friends, I came to appreciate periods of solitude, and I loved my introverted nature for the first time in my life.

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At the same time that I was learning to appreciate my introverted self, I was also embarking on a quest to find Caymanian culture. Although the brightly-colored pamphlets I’d browsed on the plane ride offered little encouragement, I was certain that I would find people, practices, or artifacts that embodied what was uniquely Caymanian. Upon our arrival at the Caribbean Marine Institute station, I asked the employee who had lived on Little Cayman the longest, Greg, if he had a book on Little Cayman’s history that I could borrow. “Let me look around!” he said enthusiastically. “I think there may have been one that I threw out when I bought the old boathouse” he chuckled. As I waited for Greg’s missing book to help me learn about Caymanian culture, I decided to take my search elsewhere and began talking with the other employees at the station.

First, there was Miss Em who cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the station. She was Jamaican-born but had moved to the islands for a better paying job as many of the employees did. She had two young children and a large family at back in Jamaica but considered herself to be Caymanian. Next there was Lowell, who was our dive master and water safety coordinator. Lowell had the most infectious smile and a wonderful Jamaican accent. He always seemed to be happy, so I was a bit surprised when I first spoke with him about his relationship with the Cayman Islands. He informed me that he had moved to Little Cayman to support his family in Jamaica after his family had lost almost everything amid a large hurricane in the 1980s. “It was like hell itself had opened up” he said with a teary look in his eye. “I remember the night clearly. The entire town had boarded themselves up in a large warehouse. It was the sturdiest building in the area, so we thought it would protect us if the steep mountainside crumbled in a landslide as it had for a neighboring town. There I stood, with my two young children held in my arms and my wife beside me, as the water began to rise in the warehouse. I spent all night with water up to my chest, holding my children and praying we wouldn’t die. The wind wailed so heavily outside it sounded like a jet airliner was continuously circling overhead. It was a living nightmare.” After he held enough money to reconstruct a small shelter for his family, Lowell had moved with a group of other young Jamaican men trained in scuba to the Cayman Islands. Although he travelled between the two islands of Little Cayman and Jamaica, he too called himself “Caymanian” when he spoke.

The next people I spoke to were Sophie and Peter. Sophie was a graduate student who was living on Little Cayman to study coral restoration efforts. She had moved from Germany and had been living at the marine institute for some time. “Yes, Little Cayman is a strange place to live” she said. “Everyone is really close, and it’s kind of this mash of European and Caribbean island culture.” Peter on the other hand was British and had recently arrived after completing his graduate program on marine biology. He informed me that his resettlement was a common story for many ex-England citizens throughout the Cayman Islands. “After all, the Cayman Islands are a British protectorate” he informed me. “The Caymanian identity is fundamentally British… you can see it in our tea shops on Grand Cayman or simply in the British terms we utilize or the side of the road we drive on.”

After having talked with all the longer-term residents of Little Cayman, I felt even more lost and confused than when I had started my quest for Caymanian culture. Was the island British? Was the island’s culture more Jamaican in nature? Was Caymanian culture fundamentally European or Caribbean? I couldn’t quite place it, which frustrated me. My confusion wasn’t alleviated by Greg however either. He returned empty handed. “I must have thrown the book out” he told me. “Sorry man.” He did however inform me that he’d done some research (okay, actually just a Wikipedia search) and found that no indigenous populations had inhabited the island before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and later fleets of British sailors. They simply couldn’t have survived without foreign trade given that agriculture wasn’t possible on the island and sources of fresh water were extremely hard to access. Okay, so I knew that Caymanian culture must not have its roots in any indigenous population. I had a starting point, but where to next? This question was shortly answered when our professor informed us that we would be visiting the Little Cayman Historic Society & Museum in a few days.

Finally, the day had arrived to visit the museum. I was hopeful to encounter some distinctly Caymanian practices that might have endured for generations. Perhaps I would find out the answers to all my longstanding questions. As my classmates and I boarded the old Marine Institute van and sang songs played over our tiny speaker (the island only had a crackly informational radio station, so unfortunately, we couldn’t hear what Caymanian music tastes were like either) I was excited.

The Little Cayman Historic Society & Museum was housed inside a small white cottage with a wrap-around porch. It was situated alongside one of the brackish pools where the frigate birds and boobies nest. After watching the acrobatic birds careen in the baby blue sky, we entered into the central room of the museum where replicas of the endemic Little Cayman Rock Iguana and a scale model of the island sat. Indeed, over the course of the next two hours I learned a tremendous amount about not only Little Cayman, but also Grand Cayman and Cayman Braac. I learned that when Christopher Columbus arrived, there were “enough turtles in the water to walk across their backs”, which is why the Spaniards named the area “Las Tortugas”. There had once been a thriving trade in hawksbill turtle shells and turtle meat throughout the Caribbean and a special turtle decoy devised by Cayman settlers to catch the reptiles, but populations had collapsed and now only a fraction of the original population remains. After the turtles, the Cayman Islands attracted British workers who came to collect poop. No, I’m being serious. Trade in seabird guano (a fancy way to say poop) became quite profitable in the late 1800s, as its high organic nitrogen and phosphorus content made for a great agricultural fertilizer. Again, a new trade network developed among the islands, as British sailors operated a guano mine not far from where the current Little Cayman Museum is perched. Eventually however, the supply of guano started to dwindle (especially because the birds were scared shitless – pun intended- and no longer nested in equivalent numbers on that side of the island). Just as the turtle trade died before them, so did the poop trade.

A male frigate bird soars through the air above the Little Cayman Historical Society & Museum. The large deposits of guano supplied by frigates and boobies once supported a thriving community of guano merchants.

Next, I came upon a frame depicting the famous royal palm rope industry which blossomed around the same time as the guano boom was starting to subside. The leaves of these native fan-shaped plants apparently produce extremely strong fronds which could be woven into large ropes that were especially useful in the shipping industry. In fact, Little Cayman’s royal palm rope was the strongest rope material in the world until the production of synthetic ropes. Again, the communities of people who had stayed for the rope industry also faded following the collapse of the industry. Today, the only remnant of the royal palms in on the insignia of the Cayman Island coat of arms.

As if these stories weren’t enough to convince me that all of Cayman culture had ‘died’ at some point or another throughout history, I continued toward a paper depicting Mounds candy bar wrappers. Apparently Little Cayman had once been covered with coconut-bearing palm trees. So many palm trees in fact that Pater Paul Candy Company received 70% of their coconut from vendors collecting coconuts on the seven square miles of Little Cayman. In the 1950s however, a coconut blight swept across the island, wiping out most of the coconut-producing palm trees nearly overnight. Even today, very few palm trees grow on the island.

Upon leaving the museum, I was crestfallen, as it didn’t seem I had found the Caymanian culture I had been looking for. There seemed to be a gap between the traditions of the past (i.e.- turtling, harvesting guano, making rope, and coconut production) and the current islands that saw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. The most recent piece of information I’d learned from the historical society was that the Queen of England, along with many other wealthy people, liked to stash her money on the island for tax-evasion purposes.

It was only after visiting the museum, when I finally decided to give up on the search for a specific type of Caymanian culture I had envisioned, that I finally realized how the dynamic nature of the islands – the fact that the local customs and people aren’t quite British but also aren’t quite Caribbean- epitomizes Caymanian culture. On our final day on the island, we were invited to join a longtime friend of our professor’s, a British woman named Debbie, for homemade ice cream on her porch. We pulled up to her ranch-style house in the middle of the hottest part of the day, I was struck with how her home incorporated many elements of Jamaican, Cuban, American, and British culture, but in an entirely new way. As Debbie invited us into the shade of her home after a circle of chairs was brought out to us, we sat and enjoyed creamy mango-flavored ice cream and a drink that tasted like a mix between sweet tea, ginger, and key lime pie. “This is a traditional Caymanian meal” Debbie informed us. The mango in the ice cream as well as the sugar cane in the drink come from Jamaica, and the tea and heavy crème come from England. You see, we Caymanians are always adapting. We are especially good at blending, complementing, and incorporating new tastes and values from the different cultures that form us today. Although others might see this place as transient, as a place for tourists and workers to come and go, for those of us crazy enough to stick around, we share a common cultural identity in that we are constantly changing, constantly evolving.” As I sat enjoying the rich mango flavor of the creamiest ice cream I’d ever had, sipping my lime and sugar cane drink, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. All this time, I had been searching for something that was directly in front on me. I had been searching to find confirmation that Caymanian culture aligned more with one culture of the other. I hadn’t considered that the island might find a shared identity in the fact that it is such a transient space. Caymanian culture was staring at me when I talked with Lowell and Miss Em about their ties with Jamaica, and it was also staring me in the face when I heard British accents and drove on left side of the road. I had been experiencing culture all along. I just hadn’t known how to recognize it.

Several of my friends dive alongside a green sea turtle above Bloody Bay Wall (a famous reef off the northern side of Little Cayman). Green, hawksbill, and leatherback sea turtles once nested in the millions across the Cayman Islands, but today their numbers are only in the thousands due to a combination of historic over-harvesting, bycatch, and oceanside development.