MV Captain Keith Tibbetts — Bloody Bay Wall

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Overview

A 100 m Koni II-class Soviet frigate (ex-Cuban Navy hull #356) scuttled off Cayman Brac's north shore in September 1996 — one of only two divable former Soviet warships in the western hemisphere. Jean-Michel Cousteau filmed the sinking. Hurricane Paloma broke the hull through the midsection in 2008, opening the engine rooms to penetration. The bow sits upright at about 24 m; the stern lies on its starboard side at 15 m, with deck guns and turrets still in place and now blanketed in orange cup coral and tube sponges.

Briefing note

Advanced Open Water with prior wreck experience recommended for any penetration; the 2008 hurricane damage left jagged metal and unstable bulkheads inside the broken hull. Bow and stern can be split across two tanks. Cayman Brac is a sister island to Little Cayman — sharing the same airport hub and many of the same liveaboard itineraries as Bloody Bay Wall — and the wreck is the island's marquee dive.

What you'll see

5 species curated

Great barracuda
year-round
Goliath grouper
rare
Yellowtail snapper
year-round
Green moray eel
year-round
Caribbean reef shark
rare

Sightings evidence

1 record on file

Great barracuda
high confidence
Last confirmed
May 2026
Recent records
65 within 50 km

Sources & methodology

How we summarise this

We aggregate confirmed occurrence records from GBIF and OBIS within a fixed radius of each dive site. Occurrence records confirm presence and reveal seasonality clustering, but they DO NOT measure per-dive probability — there is no eligible-effort denominator. We deliberately do not publish a numeric '% chance of sighting' from this data.

Sources

Global Biodiversity Information Facility — GBIF Secretariat
Ocean Biodiversity Information System — IOC-UNESCO
OBIS-SEAMAP — Duke University Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab / OBIS
iNaturalist — California Academy of Sciences & National Geographic Society
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature
WoRMS — World Register of Marine Species — Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)
FishBase — FishBase Consortium
Atlas of Living Australia — CSIRO / GBIF Australia
REEF Volunteer Fish Survey — Reef Environmental Education Foundation

The wreck

Ship history

Warship · Russia (Soviet)
MV Captain Keith Tibbetts
No formal protection
Built
1984
Sunk
Sep 17, 1996
Length
100 m
Tonnage
1,430
Diveable depth
6–27 m
How she sank
Scuttled as artificial reef
Soviet Koni-class frigate sold to Cuba then to the Cayman Islands and scuttled off Cayman Brac. The only divable former-Soviet warship in the western hemisphere.
Notable features
- forward gun turret
- anti-submarine rocket launcher
- intact bridge
- broken-in-half hull after 2008 hurricane

Vessel histories sourced from the Naval History and Heritage Command (DANFS), NOAA ENC Direct, and editorial research. Bathymetry per GEBCO. See the methodology for limits.

Conditions

Month	Water	Visibility	Current
Jan	26–27 °C	20–30 m	mild
Feb	26–27 °C	20–30 m	mild
Mar	26–28 °C	25–30 m	mild
Apr	27–28 °C	25–30 m	mild
May	27–29 °C	25–30 m	mild
Jun	28–29 °C	20–30 m	mild
Jul	28–30 °C	20–30 m	mild
Aug	29–30 °C	18–28 m	mild
Sep	29–30 °C	15–25 m	moderate
Oct	28–29 °C	15–25 m	moderate
Nov	27–28 °C	20–30 m	mild
Dec	26–27 °C	20–30 m	mild

Season calendar

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Peak season highlighted · current month outlined

Gear for this site

Beyond the basic kit

Primary plus backup torch — The midship break and the engine rooms are now penetrable, and the corridors behind the gun turrets are dark even on the brightest day.
SMB — Boat traffic over the mooring is constant and the north-shore current can drift divers off the wreck on ascent.

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