The Cayman Islands will always have a special place in the heart of acclaimed underwater photographer David Doubilet.

“I’ve been visiting Cayman and making images in Cayman since the late seventies. I shot three stories for National Geographic including one cover story. The initial story with Peter Benchley - entitled Fair Winds For the Cayman Islands - we shot in 1982 and came back to do something on Cayman Wall then another on Stingray City.

“That broke open Stingray City for the 40 million National Geographic readers all over the world. Cayman means a great deal to me,” said the photographer.

Doubilet, a native of New York, is widely-considered as one of the world’s foremost underwater photographers. A member of the International Diving Hall of Fame, he has received many prestigious awards over the course of his career and continues to pursue his craft with a passion.

“To photograph in the Caribbean is about the hardest underwater work a photographer can do. Much of it’s the same; due to the ice ages, when the freezing waters killed everything, a few things survived in the Caribbean basin but they were the same things. So you can dive in Barbados, close your eyes, come up in Belize - about as far West in the Caribbean basin as you can go - and it’s almost the same reef,” said the photographer.

Stingray City

Stingray City, he notes, is one of Cayman’s unique selling points, a special place that is the world’s most popular dive site. Doubilet and his wife Jen Hayes have a unique approach to the natural attraction.

“For me as a photographer that has been inspirational. Jen and I get a boat and go out to the sandbar all day. Dive masters ask if we just want to do two tank dives, North Wall and Burger King, and I say, no, we’re going out and staying out. If you do that you basically see a play of humanity going out and over and through the sandbar.

“When it’s all said and done, the rays revert to their normal behaviour; they start feeding on shellfish, they burrow in the sand, they’ll go to sleep, they chase each other for mating things, they’ll have territorial battles. And nobody is there; just the whispering sound of the wind going across the outer reef, the sound of breaking waves, and you’re all alone. All the laughter, the cries of wonderment and mock-fear, the whirring of blenders making marguerites have all disappeared and you’re left alone with something elemental.”

Doubilet says that Cayman is all about the water; it’s the clearest in the Caribbean, with mild crystalline quality featuring gradients of blue that are found in very few places in the world. He adds that over the years the government has realised the value of the dive industry to the islands.

“It’s amazing for me watching the diving industry grow up over the years. The government must rely on the input of divers and the input of ecologists on how to balance terrific business with terrific reef system. You have to divide reefs into places of careful preservation and some which you treat like we treat Central Park in Manhattan: use it, keep it as well as you can. It then lets other people see what a reef system is like.”

Sea appreciation

He says that over the years there has always been an evident appreciation by Caymanians of the sea that surrounds them.

“So many Caymanians have gone under the surface of the sea to see the world. I’ve been to small, single-walled homes in Cayman Brac and talked to first mates who are familiar with everything I know and you know. It’s remarkable; there’s a million stories out there. There’s an oral history there that is incredibly valuable,” he notes.

Doubilet says that the most important part of telling a story is to be honest; as a photographer, he cedes, he cannot cover breaking news but rather anticipates what might be of interest.

“One of the single most popular stories I ever did was that first one on Stingray City. It was the first meeting ground between humans and a relatively wild and perceived dangerous animal. It’s not the most ecologically-sound idea, it certainly isn’t aesthetically or biologically a wonderful thing in many respects but in the end I’ve watched that population of stingrays go from twelve to 450 rays basically living at the sandbar. If we left tomorrow and no humans showed up, that entire population would survive.

“And because of that you communicate with a million people a year who now have an appreciation for the ocean and the Cayman Islands. I heard Cayman fishermen say it’s the right of every Caymanian to feel the ray pulling on their lines. But when they started there was groups of people out at West End who wanted to catch them and how dare these foreign interlopers take our rights away. But attitudes change - I think there’s something in Cayman that the educational system needs to keep in mind. It should be the first country of the ocean in the world. It’s not for foreigners like me, it’s for Caymanians, and I’ve always felt that way,” he says, adding that the diving sector had a responsibility to take their knowledge, expertise and skill to local schools to educate the new generation.

Exhibition

Such is the love for Cayman - and its underwater life - that at a recent exhibition during the Blue Ocean Film Festival, Doubilet selected three of his sandbar shots as part of the 36 exhibited photographs from his million-strong collection. He says he is bound to return to the Cayman Islands personally and professionally.

“There’s a warm-heartedness and a real international flavour to Cayman and everything from culture to food to outlook and morality makes it an incredible place; there are stories I’d like to do but in this dog-eat-photographer world it makes sense to keep exact plans under wraps. Like Churchill said, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”

One thing you can be sure of is that David Doubilet will continue to unravel those mysteries of the deep for a long time to come.