Location and Geography

The Cayman Islands are a British Crown Colony and consist of Grand Cayman, and the two Sister Islands of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. The Cayman Islands are located in the western Caribbean, 180 miles northwest of Jamaica and 480 miles south of Miami, Florida.

Geographically, the Cayman Islands is part of the Cayman Ridge, which extends westward from Cuba. The Cayman Trench, the deepest part of the Caribbean at a depth of over four miles, separates the three small islands from Jamaica.  Cayman Brac and Little Cayman lie approximately 90 miles east-north east of Grand Cayman, a little over five miles apart. George Town, the capital, is on the western shore of Grand Cayman.

Grand Cayman, the largest of the three islands, has an area of about 76 square miles and is approximately 22 miles long with an average width of four miles. Its most striking feature is the shallow, reef-protected lagoon, the North Sound, which has an area of about 35 square miles. The island is low-lying, with the highest point about 60 feet above sea level.

Cayman Brac lies about 89 miles northeast of Grand Cayman. It is about 12 miles long with an average width of 1.25 miles and has an area of about 15 square miles. Its terrain is the most spectacular of the three islands. The Bluff, a massive central limestone outcrop, rises steadily along the length of the island up to 140 ft. above the sea at the eastern end.

Little Cayman lies five miles west of Cayman Brac and is approximately ten miles long with an average width of just over a mile. It has an area of about 10 square miles. The island is low-lying with a few areas on the north shore rising to 40 ft. above sea level.  There are no rivers on any of the islands. The coasts are largely protected by offshore reefs and in some places by a mangrove fringe that sometimes extends into inland swamps.