From GoToCayman.com - the Wiki for Cayman
GoToCayman.com - News from Cayman (ISSN: 1744-7690)
September 2007
Just before Hurricane Felix swept past Cayman, Durty Reids at Red Bay was demolished. It has now been announced that 'Durty' Reid Dennis has signed a two-year lease with the Tourism Attraction Board to operate the café at the historic Pedro St. James and is now open for business.
A new census at Grand Cayman’s stingray interactive sites, Stingray City and the Sandbar in the North Sound, is to be undertaken by the Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) next year. When the last study was undertaken in 2002, they tagged 165 animals in the sandbar, 22 from the stingray city site and 45 wild animals from around Grand Cayman that don’t interact with humans, as a control. The Department of Environment’s Assistant Director – Research and Assessment Tim Austin said that information from the last study was useful and some aspects of it were incorporated into new regulations, now being enforced, which designate both the Sandbar and Stingray City as Wildlife Interaction Zones (WIZ). He added that the study "helped to determine the required size of the various WIZs and allowed the DoE to compromise its stated position of no more additional stingray feeding sites and allow potential sites within the boundaries of the WIZ as these would be the same rays and no new population of rays would be impacted." After the previous study, the GHRI made recommendations that footwear should not be allowed in the shallow sandbar as their studies confirmed an abundance of human induced injuries to rays from footwear. This suggestion has been incorporated into the WIZ regulations.
