Bleaching reached a sea that brochures called immune. Lionfish became a brief sentence. Cruise hours still crush a few famous cuts. Those are the present.
The outlook is more tags and fewer grab-and-grin sandbars.
Trends
- Park-fee rises — Rangers as a budget.
- Ray and shark distance codes — Ethics catching up to habit.
- Purpose-sunk wrecks — Kittiwake as a template.
- Lionfish derbies — A contested tool.
- Sargassum years — A beach and boat problem some seasons.
Conservation
- Bleaching — The background emergency.
- Trampling at cuts — Hol Chan's original wound.
- Sewage and cruise — A political reef.
- Lionfish as both pest and market — An unfinished story.
Access
- Who can afford a Little Cayman week — Walls as a luxury.
- Local access to Hol Chan and BMP — Parks must not become only tender water.
- Language of briefs — Spanish, English, Kriol, Papiamentu.
- Disability — A few shore sites and Kittiwake shallows are kinder than a wall.
Outlook
- Tags as the mass product — Honest.
- Sandbars with a no-grab rule — Or closures.
- Heat policy under the brochure — Or the brochure becomes a museum.
The Caribbean future is a tag that pays a ranger. The wall will still drop into blue.