Meet the Cayman Crew of the “Beyond the Reef” Research Expedition!
Wednesday 25th February @ 5:30 (doors open)
Village Café, Governors Village
(Next to Cost-U-Less)
Everyone is welcome at this Free event!
Presentations start at 6:00pm
The Cayman Islands Deep Sea Discovery Pack is now avaialble!
This 29-page education pack includes several activities and resources for learning about Cayman’s deep sea marine environments and species and why understanding them better is so important.
DOWNLOAD your free copy and explore Cayman’s deep sea with your students, colleagues, friends and family today!
R.R.S. James Cook: Beyond the Reef
Cayman Islands February 2026
As part of the UK Government funded Blue Belt Programme, eight scientists from the Department of Environment including the Blue Belt Programme Officer and members of the Marine, Coral and Terrestrial Research Unit teams, will be embarking on an expedition onboard the state-of-the-art UK Royal Research Ship the R.R.S. James Cook in January and February 2026. The expedition will embark from the Dominican Republic on Tuesday 13th January and travel through the Caribbean Sea, conducting research in the water of and calling at Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands and then end in Cayman, with the crew disembarking in George Town Harbour on Wednesday 25th February, 2026.
The Caribbean research expedition is a rare and exciting opportunity to better understand our offshore waters and deep sea environment through collecting information on the types of habitats that exist, the health of economically important fish stocks, the connectivity between our nearshore and deep sea coral reefs and the presence of pollutants and nutrients in our water.
We hope to share the findings from the expedition and outline how these will be used to better protect our important offshore marine ecosystems and help achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework of protecting 30% of Cayman waters by 2030.
