A Department of Environment boat sank overnight Wednesday while moored off the coast of Little Cayman.
The circumstances behind the sinking of the vessel, which had been near the island to take part in the annual ‘Grouper Moon Project‘ spawning event, are still unknown, according to DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie.
She told the Compass Thursday evening that the boat had been taken to Little Cayman earlier this month.
“An officer noticed it [Thursday morning],” she said. “They’d checked it the day before, and then, overnight, it was upside down.”
She added, “Our efforts now are to try to get it off the bottom, and to try to figure out what happened, if we can.”
The twin-engine vessel, which is usually based in Grand Cayman’s waters and is one of the DoE’s bigger boats, regularly makes the trip to Little Cayman.
“It’s one of our larger boats, so we can use it to take a bigger dive crew, dive gear, which we need for the Grouper Moon Project,” she said.
Each year, DoE staff and other marine scientists travel to Little Cayman to record the annual spawning of the endangered Nassau grouper, which gather in their thousands off the island during a winter full moon.
Asked if foul play was suspected in the sinking of the boat, the director said that was not being ruled out. “But, we don’t know,” she said. “Everybody is trying to figure out what happened.”
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