Swimming Through the Silver Curtain
Silversides A Cayman Wonder
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Tarpons, jacks and groupers soon await a feast with the return of thousands of silvery fish showing up in coastal waters each year between June and August: the silversides. During the daytime, they rest in big schools inside of caverns, swim-throughs, grottoes and wrecks. Their massive schooling behavior makes the little fishes less vulnerable — as their continuous movement could give any lurking creature a headache. Divers love to plan their Cayman diving trips around the arrival of these tiny fish. They are even showing up in the USS Kittiwake as we speak!
Not only predators rejoice in their arrival but local dive operators tend to jump for joy! Cayman diving is always spectacular, but the silversides are pure magic. To be able to show this sight to underwater lovers gives a lot of fulfillment and happy faces all over.
For lucky residents like me, who are also avid divers and underwater photographers, the first messages about silversides appearing in social media, trigger my Pavlov reaction: "I need to see them now and often please".
Partly because swimming through the silver curtains is pure magic, but also because it's a huge challenge for an underwater photographer to play with light in the grottoes and caves filled with reflecting fish. My favorite dive site offers this experience with silversides: Devil's Grotto (part of the Eden Rock shore-diving location).
To merge the natural sunlight entering the swim-throughs with artificial strobe light AND to do that subtly, without overexposure, kept me busy for some dives.
Schools of silversides are enchanting to watch, dancing in the rays of light, with the fish moving in unison as if they are a single creature. The timing and magnitude of silverside schools varies from year to year; most summers they are monstrous. At peak times in Grand Cayman the schools can completely fill the caverns and gullies of dive sites like Grouper Grotto and Snapper Hole, even overflowing across the top of the coral reef.
On these exceptional days these dives are probably the best in the world, as divers not only descend beneath the waves, but then also on into another living liquid of millions of fish. As you scuba dive and fin forward the school parts in front of you, then engulfs you in a bubble of clear water, entirely and symmetrically encircled by fish. Suddenly a predator bolts through the mass, hoping to catch a straggler, momentarily scattering the silversides before they reform into their sinuous mass. Cayman summers don’t get any better than this.
Every July, August and September in Grand Cayman, experience one of the famous Silverside dive sites of: Grouper Grotto, Ironshore Gardens, Chub Hole or Snapper Hole during our summer season bloom. Be immersed in a bait-ball of life as Tarpon, Jacks and Snappers dive-bomb and feed on this silver seafood buffet. Divers call this a "Silver Rush".
“We arranged the workshops in early August to specifically catch the silverside explosion, but you can never be sure,” says Alex Mustard of his Digital Madness photo workshops headquartered at the Compass Point Dive Resort and diving with Ocean Frontiers. “They are never 100% predicable because they disperse from the caverns each night to feed; the numbers are not always the same one day to the next.”
Grand Cayman resident and photographer Ellen Cuylaerts describes the experience in an article. “It's a huge challenge for an underwater photographer to play with light in the grottoes and caves filled with reflecting fish,” she writes. “To merge the natural sunlight entering the swim-throughs with artificial strobe light AND to do that subtly, without overexposure, kept me busy for some dives.”
The never-ending synchronized motion of the little silver fish and their predators is what enthralls underwater cinematographer Frans de Backer, who has produced incredible videos of the dance of the silversides. A resident of Grand Cayman, de Backer spends as much time as possible videotaping this “feast for the eyes”.
“It's so addictive and like a bonfire always different,” he says. “The key to filming this amazing event is to go back as many times as you can and spend as much time there as you can. Observe, look at the light, watch the behavior and then go with the flow. Relax and become part of it.”
The silversides school all over the island and have been spotted in about 30 of Grand Cayman’s dive sites, including inside the Kittiwake Wreck. The biggest concentration of the little silver fish consistently shows up at Grouper Grotto in East End and Devil’s Grotto and Eden Rock on the West Side of the island. Dive operators like Ocean Frontiers and Divetech schedule dedicated “Silver Rush” dives. Others like Sunset House and Red Sail Sports visit silverside sites on the second dive of a 2 –tank boat trip on a regular basis because of their close proximity to the cavernous sites.
Not only predators rejoice in their arrival but local dive operators tend to jump for joy! Cayman diving is always spectacular, but the silversides are pure magic. To be able to show this sight to underwater lovers gives a lot of fulfillment and happy faces all over.
For lucky residents like me, who are also avid divers and underwater photographers, the first messages about silversides appearing in social media, trigger my Pavlov reaction: "I need to see them now and often please".
Partly because swimming through the silver curtains is pure magic, but also because it's a huge challenge for an underwater photographer to play with light in the grottoes and caves filled with reflecting fish. My favorite dive site offers this experience with silversides: Devil's Grotto (part of the Eden Rock shore-diving location).
To merge the natural sunlight entering the swim-throughs with artificial strobe light AND to do that subtly, without overexposure, kept me busy for some dives.
Schools of silversides are enchanting to watch, dancing in the rays of light, with the fish moving in unison as if they are a single creature. The timing and magnitude of silverside schools varies from year to year; most summers they are monstrous. At peak times in Grand Cayman the schools can completely fill the caverns and gullies of dive sites like Grouper Grotto and Snapper Hole, even overflowing across the top of the coral reef.
On these exceptional days these dives are probably the best in the world, as divers not only descend beneath the waves, but then also on into another living liquid of millions of fish. As you scuba dive and fin forward the school parts in front of you, then engulfs you in a bubble of clear water, entirely and symmetrically encircled by fish. Suddenly a predator bolts through the mass, hoping to catch a straggler, momentarily scattering the silversides before they reform into their sinuous mass. Cayman summers don’t get any better than this.
Grand Cayman resident and photographer Ellen Cuylaerts describes the experience in an article. “It's a huge challenge for an underwater photographer to play with light in the grottoes and caves filled with reflecting fish,” she writes. “To merge the natural sunlight entering the swim-throughs with artificial strobe light AND to do that subtly, without overexposure, kept me busy for some dives.”
The never-ending synchronized motion of the little silver fish and their predators is what enthralls underwater cinematographer Frans de Backer, who has produced incredible videos of the dance of the silversides. A resident of Grand Cayman, de Backer spends as much time as possible videotaping this “feast for the eyes”.
“It's so addictive and like a bonfire always different,” he says. “The key to filming this amazing event is to go back as many times as you can and spend as much time there as you can. Observe, look at the light, watch the behavior and then go with the flow. Relax and become part of it.”
The silversides school all over the island and have been spotted in about 30 of Grand Cayman’s dive sites, including inside the Kittiwake Wreck. The biggest concentration of the little silver fish consistently shows up at Grouper Grotto in East End and Devil’s Grotto and Eden Rock on the West Side of the island. Dive operators like Ocean Frontiers and Divetech schedule dedicated “Silver Rush” dives. Others like Sunset House and Red Sail Sports visit silverside sites on the second dive of a 2 –tank boat trip on a regular basis because of their close proximity to the cavernous sites.
Find out about the best dive operators and more at www.passengerpicks.com
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