50 Fun Facts About Cayman Islands

Legend says a grateful monarch rewarded Cayman Islands rescuers of ten wrecked ships in 1794 with what?

Freedom from taxes is the reward of legend, though no record of any royal decree has ever been found. The Cayman Islands still charge no income tax.

Which animals do visitors hand-feed with squid while standing on a shallow North Sound sandbar off Grand Cayman?

Southern stingrays learned to link the sound of boat engines with food, so dozens now crowd the sandbar known as Stingray City.

Which Grand Cayman attraction, a patch of black limestone formations, has its own post office for mailing postcards?

Hell covers roughly half a football field of black limestone, and visitors may only look at the formations from viewing platforms.

Which lizard found only on Grand Cayman was down to fewer than 15 wild animals in 2003 before breeding revived it?

The blue iguana has been rebuilt by releasing hundreds of captive-bred animals since 2004, and it may live for up to 69 years.

The currency of the Cayman Islands has been pegged since 1974 to which foreign currency, at a rate above one-to-one?

The US dollar buys only about 80 Cayman cents, because one Cayman Islands dollar has been fixed at US$1.20 since 1974.

The Cayman Islands take their name from an indigenous Caribbean word for which reptile that once lived there?

Crocodile is the meaning of caimán, and by 1530 the islands were known as the Caymanes rather than Las Tortugas.

Which US president branded Ugland House, the Cayman Islands address of thousands of companies, a scam?

Barack Obama made the jibe during his first presidential campaign; the building's actual occupant is the law practice Maples and Calder.

Which explorer sighted the Cayman Islands in 1503 and named them Las Tortugas after the turtles there?

Christopher Columbus came upon the two smaller islands on his fourth and final voyage, when winds blew his ship off course.

Which skateboarder opened Grand Cayman's Black Pearl Skate Park in 2005, then the Western Hemisphere's largest?

Tony Hawk opened the park in 2005, a striking record for an island only about 35 km long.

Which film of a John Grisham legal thriller shot scenes in the Cayman Islands, where part of its plot unfolds?

The Firm sends its young lawyer to the Caymans, where his employers keep their secret files in a condominium.

Which capital of the Cayman Islands has no cruise berth, so liners anchor offshore and tender passengers in?

George Town takes its name from George III, and up to four cruise ships at a time can anchor off its three terminals.

Which crescent of coral sand on Grand Cayman's western shore holds most of the island's luxury resorts and hotels?

Seven Mile Beach is really a little over six miles of sand at most, and all of it is public property that anyone may walk.

Until 1962 the Cayman Islands were governed as a dependency of which nearby colony, which then chose independence?

Jamaica became independent in 1962, while the Cayman Islands opted to stay under the British Crown as a separate colony.

Which bird, a national symbol of the Cayman Islands, nests in tree holes and is illegal to take from the wild?

Parrot subspecies live on Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac; the Brac bird once lived on Little Cayman too but has vanished from that island.

Which large sea snail is a Cayman Islands staple, served marinated, in salads, in chowders and in stews?

Conch, above all the queen conch, has been a staple of Caymanian cooking for many years, alongside snapper, tuna and mahi-mahi.

'Beloved Isle Cayman' is the national song of the Cayman Islands, but which piece is the official national anthem?

God Save the King is the anthem because the islands remain a British territory; the national song was written by Leila Ross-Shier in 1930.

Which two industries, called the twin pillars of the Cayman Islands economy, together produce at least half its GDP?

Tourism and finance both took off from the 1950s, once modern transport and telecommunications reached the islands.

Which annual November festival in the Cayman Islands was launched in 1977 to draw visitors in the quiet season?

Pirates Week now reaches all three islands, with Cayman Brac and Little Cayman each staging their own heritage days.

The Cayman Turtle Centre on Grand Cayman began in 1968 as a commercial farm raising green sea turtles for what?

Their meat was sold locally so that wild turtles could be left alone, and the farm has since released thousands of animals into the sea.

The national flower of the Cayman Islands is a wild orchid named after which fruit, thanks to its clustered bulbs?

Banana-shaped pseudo-bulbs at the base of the flower spike give the wild banana orchid its name, and each island group has its own variety.

Which English sea captain visited the Cayman Islands in 1586 and reported that the reptiles there were edible?

Francis Drake is the first recorded English visitor; England did not take formal control of the islands for another 84 years.

Cayman Brac is said to take its name from 'brac', a Gaelic word for which landform running the island's length?

A bluff of limestone climbs steadily along Cayman Brac, and its eastern end is the highest ground in the Cayman Islands.

What did scientists find almost 5,000 metres down in the Cayman Trough in 2010, then the deepest of their kind known?

Hydrothermal vents there gush water at about 400 °C, and the same trough holds the deepest point in the Caribbean Sea.

Which sheer underwater drop-off on Little Cayman is consistently ranked among the world's top scuba dive sites?

Bloody Bay Wall begins in only 18 feet of water and then plunges almost vertically, which is rare for a reef wall.

Which Grand Cayman village, founded in the 1700s, was the original capital of the Cayman Islands?

Bodden Town sits in the middle of Grand Cayman, and its people helped rescue the crews in the 1794 Wreck of the Ten Sail.

Which great house, the oldest stone building in the Cayman Islands, is called the birthplace of its democracy?

Pedro St. James hosted the 1831 meeting that set up an elected assembly, and over the years it has also been a courthouse, a jail and a hotel.

Which official, appointed by the British monarch, represents the Crown in the Cayman Islands and assents to its laws?

The Governor may withhold assent from a bill, while day-to-day government is led by a Premier drawn from the elected Parliament.

Rope made from which national tree of the Cayman Islands was once the territory's largest source of export revenue?

Silver thatch palm leaves are green on top and silvery underneath, and they also went into roofs, hats, baskets and fans.

The warship sunk off Cayman Brac in 1996 as the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts dive site was built in which country?

The Soviet Union built the frigate in 1984 for Cuba's navy, and the Cayman Islands government later bought it to sink as a dive attraction.

Which Cayman Islands carnival is named after the tracks that turtles leave in the sand when they come ashore to nest?

Batabano was first staged by the Rotary Club in 1983, which makes it far younger than most Caribbean carnivals.

The Cayman Islands motto, about being founded upon the seas, is a verse from which book of the Bible?

Psalms supplied the line, from Psalm 24, which sits under the shield on the coat of arms as a nod to faith and seafaring.

Which Lord of the Rings star appeared in Haven, a 2004 film shot entirely in the Cayman Islands?

Orlando Bloom starred alongside Zoë Saldaña in the drama, which was written and directed by Caymanian film-maker Frank E. Flowers.

In which sport did Jordan Crooks win the Cayman Islands' first world title in any sport, in 2022?

Swimming gave the territory its first world champion, and Crooks later became the first man under 20 seconds in the short-course 50 m freestyle.

Dow Travers became the first Winter Olympian from the Cayman Islands in 2010 by competing in which sport?

Alpine skiing took Travers to Vancouver, where he finished 69th in the giant slalom and carried the flag at both ceremonies.

Sir Turtle, the turtle mascot of Cayman Airways, gained which accessory in 1978 thanks to the airline's chief pilot?

A red flying scarf was the idea of pilot Wilbur Thompson; Suzy Soto's original Sir Turtle had first appeared on customs baggage stickers.

The Cayman Islands have competed at every Summer Olympics since 1976 except the boycotted Games held in which city?

Moscow in 1980 is the only gap, because the territory joined the American-led boycott just four years after its Olympic debut.

What natural phenomenon lights the water at night in Sand Point Cove, near Rum Point on Grand Cayman?

Bioluminescence gives the cove its local nickname, the Bio Bay, and it lies in the North Side district beside Kaibo.

What do Caymanians call the prehistoric coral reef rock that lines the Cayman Islands coast and juts from the sea?

Ironshore is ancient reef left exposed along the coast, and a cliff of it holds the memorial to the Wreck of the Ten Sail.

Before it was sunk off Grand Cayman as a dive site, the USS Kittiwake helped recover wreckage of which space shuttle?

Challenger's lost solid rocket booster was raised by Kittiwake from 177 feet of water in 1986, a quarter of a century before her own sinking.

Which 2004 hurricane damaged most homes on Grand Cayman and put nearly all of the island under its storm surge?

Ivan struck in September 2004 with a storm surge of eight to ten feet, and power and water took months to restore in places.

The 1670 treaty by which Spain recognised English control of the Cayman Islands is named after which city?

Madrid gave its name to the treaty, but no lasting English-speaking settlement took root on the islands until the 1730s.

Whose trimaran Teignmouth Electron, a ghost ship of the 1968 Golden Globe Race, ended up beached on Cayman Brac?

Donald Crowhurst radioed false positions before vanishing at sea; his boat later worked as a dive boat before being beached on the island.

Caymanite, the semi-precious stone carved by Cayman Brac artists, is an uncommon variety of which mineral?

Dolomite coloured white, red or black forms the stone, which fills small cavities and fossil moulds in the islands' limestone.

Which seabird nests on Little Cayman in a colony that may hold a third of its Caribbean and Atlantic population?

Red-footed booby numbers at the island's Booby Pond reach up to 20,000 birds, and the wetland is protected as a Ramsar site.

Cayman Brac and Little Cayman together go by which name, also used for the district they form?

Sister Islands is the name for the pair, which lie only about 8 km apart but well over 100 km north-east of Grand Cayman.

Early Caymanian wreckers are said to have lured ships onto Cayman Islands reefs by tying lanterns to which animals?

Mules or donkeys with lanterns feature in an old island story about wreckers, though nobody is sure the trick was ever really used.

Short of fresh water, the Cayman Islands get their drinking water from rainwater catchment and which other source?

Desalination fills the gap on these low limestone islands, where the lack of fresh water counts as a major environmental issue.

The national flag flown on land in the Cayman Islands sets the coat of arms on which British flag?

The Blue Ensign carries the arms on land, while Cayman-registered ships fly a different ensign at sea.

Although the Cayman Islands is a British territory, which emergency phone number do its residents dial instead of 999?

911 is the same number used in the United States and Canada, and one communications centre takes the calls for all three islands.

Early settlers of the Cayman Islands are said to have included deserters from which English leader's army?

Oliver Cromwell's troops captured a nearby Spanish colony in 1655, and one early Caymanian family is said to descend from one of his soldiers.