Cayman could be sitting on a gold mine within its marine borders, research by the Compass indicates.
Within a sprawling – but loosely defined and sometimes contested – marine zone around the three islands is a potential bounty of mineral wealth, vast fishing grounds and research opportunities.
The relatively unmonitored zone also poses diverse threats – from drug traffickers, people smugglers, illegal fishing operations and ‘shadow fleets’ seeking to profit from one of the most geologically diverse and environmentally rich sub-sea environments in the world.
Each of the inhabited Cayman Islands are pinnacles that barely emerge from the sea, on a vast underwater mountain range called the Cayman Ridge that extends a little over 900 miles from southeastern Cuba towards Belize.
Over the past 50 years, most of the economic focus and attention in the Cayman Islands has been limited to the 100 square miles of land area. However, that represents only a tiny fraction of the total area that is legally Cayman.
Beyond the beaches and the ironshore coastlines, there is a vast sea that is also part of our territory, and within it there are both natural and mineral resources that are ours to protect, and potentially utilise.
At the present time, however, it is not clear how effectively we are actually protecting and managing that zone.
What are Cayman’s marine borders?
The United Nations Law of the Sea sets out the framework for how countries operate with respect to the sea – what is theirs and what belongs to someone else.
Starting from the shoreline, a territorial sea extends out to 12 nautical miles, but there is another area beyond that. Farther out from the territorial sea, each country is also entitled to an area known as an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and these waters continue out from the continental shelf (in our case, the drop-off) and goes out 200 nautical miles.
General area of the Cayman Islands Exclusive Economic Zone. – Photo: Marineregions.org
Within the Caribbean, the claims of various islands, including Cayman, collide with competing claims from neighbouring countries. Some form of equal and fair distribution of the area is expected to be reached by the two states, and if they can’t reach peaceful agreement, it may go to arbitration proceedings with the United Nations.
Cayman reached agreement with Honduras in 2001 but is still working to establish our borders with both Jamaica and Cuba.
What is out there?
North Wall, Grand Cayman. – Photo: Jason Washington
Below the Cayman Ridge, to the south of the Cayman Islands, is an area known as the Cayman Trench or Cayman Trough. Also known as the Bartlett Deep, the waters in the Cayman Trench include the deepest part of the Caribbean Sea. In places, the sea floor is more than 25,000 feet at its deepest point, and in these great depths, the water is close to freezing and there is virtually no light.
Strange and unusual species of fish that are rarely seen inhabit this deep area beyond the twilight zone. The abyss that surrounds the Cayman Islands is a place of mystery, and the few that have voyaged to the bottom of the Cayman Trench have discovered remarkable things, including possibly significant amounts of gold and other important minerals, in Cayman waters.
There is still so much that is unknown and yet to be discovered. There are locations and features on the sea floor around the Von Damm and Beebe vent fields that are only now being explored for the first time. And, as has recently been reported, an autonomous drone is currently mapping the deep sea around the Cayman Islands.
Beaked whales and giant squid
Saildrone survey area of Cayman waters.
Cayman waters are home to various types of whales including pilot whales and the rare beaked whales. There are also giant squid, deep-water snappers and many other species of bottom-dwelling fish. There may even be fish stocks in the 1,000-to-3,000-foot range that represent commercially valuable fisheries, if they are harvested in sustainable ways.
The deep blue is also the home of pelagic marine fish, such as the blue marlin, sailfish, swordfish, blackfin tuna, flying fish, kingfish, dolphinfish and yellowtails. Sharks inhabit the deep waters as well, including whitetip sharks which patrol the surface water of the deep zone around the Cayman Islands.
The Department of Environment acknowledges it has not done much to manage the vast majority of Cayman waters other than the shallow inshore zone.
A blue marlin, one of the many pelagic creatures in Cayman waters. – Photo: Cayman Billfish Rundown
“Absent a dedicated monitoring programme, there simply aren’t enough human or operational resources to dedicate to this function at this time,” a spokesperson said.
Is there a threat to Cayman’s fisheries?
The DoE did not rule out the possibility that fish stocks are, or have been, targeted by foreign fleets, but in the absence of offshore patrols or marine radar, it is not clear how the jurisdiction would be aware of illegal and unregulated fishing activity in our waters.
Fishing aggregation device and ghost net previously found floating off George Town Harbour. – Photo: DoE
Some years ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a report confirming that there was some evidence that swordfish were being caught by foreign vessels in Cayman waters and there have been other indications that this was not an isolated incident, and that, from time to time, it has happened in the past.
Raymond Jackson, who claims to be the first person to scuba dive on 60-Mile Bank, remembers “a few long liners coming through Cayman waters, especially along the eastern edge of Misteriosa Bank, west of the Cayman Islands back in the 1980s.”
But beyond such anecdotes, there is limited knowledge of what exploitation may be taking place in Cayman’s waters, out of sight of authorities.
Submarines, gold and mineral resources
Over the past 30 years, a number of foreign governments, and major scientific institutions have mounted submarine missions to research and explore part of the Cayman Trench southwest of Grand Cayman, in a location called the Mid-Cayman Rise.
This is an area inside the Cayman Islands EEZ where two tectonic plates spread apart – the Caribbean plate and the North American plate – and potentially valuable mineral resources may be located in this tectonically active area southwest of Grand Cayman.
A submarine in the Cayman Trough. – Photo: Simon Boxall
In 2009, a research team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution dove into the Cayman Trench using a deep-sea robotic vehicle called Nereus, and they found evidence of three hydrothermal vents in the spreading centre.
These vents are environments where very hot water comes out of the sea floor. Some scientists have proposed that the vents could even be a possible origin of life on Earth. In a paper published in the journal Nature in 2017, it was suggested, “Although it is not known when or where life on Earth began, some of the earliest habitable environments may have been submarine-hydrothermal vents.”
Following the Woods Hole research mission, the UK’s National Oceanography Centre conducted an expedition to the Mid-Cayman Rise in 2010, using their autonomous underwater vehicle, the Autosub 6000. It was during this mission that they located and photographed the ‘world’s deepest hydrothermal vent.’
World’s deepest hydrothermal vent, the Mid-Cayman Rise, nearly 3 miles beneath the surface. – Photo: Doug Main (NERC/NOC)
At the time of the discovery of the vent field in the Mid-Cayman Rise, marine biologist Jon Copley said, “Seeing the world’s deepest black-smoker vents looming out of the darkness was awe-inspiring,” adding, “Super-heated water was gushing out of their two-storey-high mineral spires, more than three miles beneath the waves.”
Expedition leader Doug Connelly said of the research expedition: “We hope our discovery will yield new insights into biogeochemically important elements in one of the most extreme naturally occurring environments on our planet.”
What other research has taken place?
RV Falkor and the Nereus Submersible at the Mid-Cayman Rise. – Photo: Schmidt Ocean Institute
Following the initial scientific investigations of what became known as the Von Damm and Beebe vent fields, a number of other expeditions quickly followed, to further map and research the area.
In 2012, a joint venture between the UK and US governments deployed the deep-diving, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason and the next year, Harvard University explored the area using the Alvin Submersible. Later in 2013, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution mounted another expedition using the hybrid underwater robotic vehicle Nereus, and the robotic underwater vehicle HyBIS, and in June 2013, a Japanese expedition went into the Cayman Trench using their crewed submersible Shinkai 6500. Following that, the the UK government again returned to explore the Cayman vent fields using the Isis ROV.
So, what did they find?
Following the discovery of the hydrothermal vents in Cayman waters, an article appeared on the BBC news service describing that mission, noting, “Gold, silver, copper and zinc are all present in the mineral-rich emissions of the vent systems and recent advances in deep-sea oil exploration are giving miners the chance to exploit these areas for the first time.”
Accessing the resources in the Cayman Trench poses enormous logistical issues due to the extreme depths. There are many concerns, particularly around mining around active hydrothermal vent fields because they host populations of shrimps and worms around the massive sulphide deposits that form when the super-heated water gushes out of the sea floor.
Bramley Murton
– Photo: UK National Oceanography Centre
Bramley J Murton of the UK National Oceanography Centre in Southampton is described as a specialist in blue mining and marine e-tech, and has been involved in the research activities in the Mid-Cayman Rise.
In a paper on the formation of gold-rich sea floor sulphide deposits in the Cayman Trough, he wrote, “Mineral deposits form on the sea floor at hydrothermal vent sites and are rich in metals including copper, zinc, lead, and sometimes precious metals like gold and silver.”
In another paper authored by Murton, he argues that “despite occurring in extreme environments, (sulphide deposits) are becoming increasingly attractive as a future resource”.
He notes, “The mineral resources are exposed at or close to the seabed and, unlike their continental counterparts, not buried under hundreds of metres of rock.”
It is not just gold that is out there; he notes the sea floor sulphide deposits are also rich in rare earth metals that have become essential in e-tech including components in batteries.
In the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s blog, ‘Oases 2012: Return to the Cayman Rise‘, it was acknowledged that, “It has been said one of the biggest threats to hydrothermal vent ecosystems are the scientists who research them. After all, we do collect wildlife samples, break off pieces of vent chimneys and scoop up rocks, which are all technically habitats down there. But is it so bad if all this is done in the name of science? Well, yes and no, but there are ways to be responsible about advancing the sphere of knowledge without being overly destructive.”
During one of the research trips to the Mid-Cayman Rise, the Japanese team using the Shinkai 6500 lost a 5,000-metre-long cable, which fell to the sea floor of the pristine environment of the Beebe vent field, and this thick yellow cable was still visible to researchers on subsequent missions to the Cayman Trough and considered a threat for entanglement for future submarine operations.
A Caymanian dives into the abyss
Very few Caymanians have ventured into the cold and inky depths of the Cayman Trench, but in 2020, a joint US/UK research expedition set off for the Mid-Cayman Rise on the R/V Atlantis vessel.
The Department of Environment told the Compass on 7 Oct. in an emailed statement, “We were fortunate to have DoE researcher Sabrina Douglas available for one recent cruise conducted aboard HOV Alvin, which we just received the report for last week. We have yet to publish it but will soon.”
DoE researcher Sabrina Douglas and deep-sea biologist Tim Shank before diving on the Alvin. – Photo: Supplied
Regarding the whereabouts of the data for all the other previous submarine research missions into the Cayman Trench, and whether complete data sets were available to local researchers, as well as students at the University College of the Cayman Islands, the DoE responded that, “Data collected by international expeditions is collected and housed by the UK Hydrographic Office. Since this particular data is driven by local research endeavours, and as such there is no programme for its immediate use, it is more easily organised and accessible to other academic researchers through the UKHO.
“Anyone who wants to access it can do so through the UKHO and we are grateful for this service.”
Major shipping lane
The Gener8 Atlas tanker passes Grand Cayman. – Photo: Eziethamae Bodden
The absence of clearly defined borders with Cuba and Jamaica may be leading to a more general lack of enforcement and monitoring of the waters around the Cayman Islands, despite the fact that a major shipping lane runs past the the territory.
Numerous ships, including crude oil tankers carrying millions of barrels of oil transit through Cayman waters daily, about 30 to 50 miles south of Grand Cayman, before most of them head north through the Yucatan Channel and into the Gulf of Mexico.
In a paper in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, ‘Potential oil spill risk from shipping and the implications in the Caribbean Sea’, the author states that “approximately 83% of the (Caribbean) sea could be potentially impacted by oil spills due to shipping”.
Collisions at sea are also a concern. In a PhD thesis titled, ‘Risk Assessment and Mitigation Measures of Maritime Navigation in the Caribbean Sea’, it is noted that “there is an urgent need to monitor and manage risks to maritime navigation to ensure improved security of the maritime environment”.
Venezuela’s ‘shadow’ fleet
Another potential concern due to the proximity of regional shipping routes to the Cayman Islands is the so-called dark or shadow fleet of tankers.
With the limited offshore patrol capacity and no marine radar, it is not clear whether the Cayman Islands would be able to identify ships that could pose a risk to navigation, especially when they turn off their AIS tracking system to avoid detection.
According to a shipping industry publication “a large portion of tanker fleets owned by Venezuela and Cuba are under U.S. sanctions, which also limits their travel. Operated by third parties, dark fleet vessels often lack western insurance and send false location signals to disguise their movement.”
The article goes on to say that, “The vessels spoof their signal, making them look elsewhere in the Caribbean while they are discharging in Cuba, often by ship-to-ship transfers, according to monitoring service TankerTrackers.com and a satellite photo by Planet Labs seen by Reuters.”
Matthew Smith, writing for Oilprice.com, said, “The rise of the ‘dark fleet,’ vessels that hide their locations to transport illegal oil cargoes, has enabled Venezuela to continue exporting oil in defiance of U.S. sanctions, contributing to its economic recovery.”
He added, “PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, has leased numerous tankers, many in poor condition, to facilitate the clandestine shipment of oil, with Iran providing critical aid to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.”
The threat of oil spills from these vessels, during ship-to-ship transfers, is another threat that is relatively unmanaged at present.
Monitoring migration routes
In 2022, more than 300 Cuban nationals arrived in the Cayman Islands illegally by boat, costing the Cayman Islands government over $3 million to house, feed and, in some cases, repatriate them. In 2023, the cost to the government was more than $1.5 million.
Cubans off the coast of Grand Cayman. – Photo: File
While it is not clear that increased domain awareness, or improved capacity for the Cayman Islands to intercept migrants at sea, would necessarily reduce both the number of dangerous marine crossings in unseaworthy vessels, as well as people-smuggling operations, it is possible it may help provide a degree of deterrence.
In May 2024, Customs and Border Control stated in a press release, in response to the Cuban migration issue, government would be funding a new $2.4 million purpose-built immigration detention facility to securely house and monitor 180 people in “permanent structures”, with surge capacity to accommodate an additional 144 people in short-term housing.
Search-and-rescue capacity
The creation of a Cayman Islands Coast Guard has expanded Cayman’s previously very limited capacity to police its waters.
However, the Coast Guard still has very limited marine assets suitable for long-range offshore operations and it remains dependent on the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service’s EC135 helicopter for long-range search-and-rescue operations and some missions to the Sister Islands.
Five months ago, government announced that “The UK Government had pledged £1 million (CI$1.04 million)” in support of the effort to purchase and install marine radar to improve domain awareness and to help combat illicit activities in Cayman waters.
At the time of the announcement, Governor Jane Owen told the Compass, “Our Coast Guard has been considering the best technological solutions for Cayman’s three islands and we will consider these proposals in Cabinet soon.”
The Coast Guard declined to speak on its capacity to police Cayman’s waters and marine economic zone for national security reasons.
British partners
In regard to increasing domain awareness and ability to patrol Cayman waters, the Department of Environment did state that it is currently partnering with the British agencies (with UK funding support), to establish a Cayman Islands Blue Belt programme covering a number of relevant initiatives, including “assessing the possibility of satellite surveillance and other technology for monitoring international vessels in our offshore waters”.
However, the DoE added that the programme was still in its infancy – likely coming on line in 2025 – so it had nothing significant to report from this project yet.
The DoE also reported that, “Another new Blue Belt programme that is just getting started is exploring new technology for cost effectively gathering … fish population data from offshore areas.”
Despite the declaration of a 200-mile fisheries zone 46 years ago and the establishment of Cayman’s exclusive zone with Honduras, the lack of defined borders has perhaps been part of the reason why we have done so little to actively manage the vast majority of what could be regarded as the Cayman Islands.
It may also be a lack of resources. In the past few years, the Coast Guard has worked to expand the search-and-rescue area around Cayman, but this still represents a far smaller area than what is likely to encompass our borders.
