Cayman Turtle Centre — Attraction in West Bay

Turtle Center Detailed Review

We arrived at 2:00 pm. There was no line and generally there were few people there. If you wanted to swim with the turtles, it was $47.50 and if you didn’t, it was $30. This is a very laid-back place and it was quite fun. Everyone in our group from age 29 to 60 enjoyed it. We saw the whole place in two hours, and that was about the right amount of time.

The swim with the turtles ends at 2:30 and 30 minutes was just about the right time for this. Most of the turtles congregate in the farthest section of the “tank” from where you enter. This is a large tank. If you swim it straight down, it seems like it’s about .1 miles. It is not small and there are structures in the middle that you swim around. It starts out just 1 to 2 inches deep and then gradually gets to 4 feet deep and then drops to 12 feet deep. They give you a snorkel, mask and life vest that you can either choose to blow up or not blow up. You should definitely bring a towel. The people in our group that did this really liked it. There were maybe 30 to 40 turtles in the tank. The turtles range from 1 foot long to 30 inches long. There were no really large turtles in this tank but it was still quite fun. There were also quite a few fish some as big as 12 inches. There was nothing scary here and it was very enjoyable. I mean, how often do you get to swim with a lot of turtles and fish?

There were small tanks where you could touch turtles and even wade in with some.

There were tanks with very large turtles that you couldn’t touch, but it was nice to see them up close.

They have a nurse shark, but the nurse shark was extremely inactive and didn’t do anything. One thing that freaked me out was when you’re swimming with the turtles There is a window where you can see the nurse shark - I thought it was a mirror to begin with!

The crocodile was extremely scary, it was hard to even see it because it was so camouflaged, it was kind of interesting.

Surprisingly, the bacon cheeseburger and fries we bought was very good.

They also have a large swimming pool and waterslide. They have a little nature trail with a butterfly house. There were no butterflies in the butterfly house.

We just kind of wandered around the place and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We watch the large turtles being fed. There was like 100 of them that was interesting.

We took a taxi from Seven Mile beach and it was about a 10 minute ride for six of us. It was $30 going and $45 coming back. When you are ready to leave The turtle center will call you a taxi if you ask them to, there was a 20 minute wait when we did that.

The gift shop was also pretty good. If you are looking for a place that is laid-back and where you can just kinda walk around lazily and get good food and see interesting nature stuff this is the place. We...

Let me start by saying, I’m very easy to please, i understand that not everything can be controlled. Awful experience. Arrived via the carnival conquest. Bought the excursion through carnival. We sat in the heat for 2 hours after getting off the boat, waiting to be busses to the place. On the way there, the employees kept talking about “if you leave on your own..” I wondered, why would anyone leave the excursion early. Then we got there. I understood why people leave early. Staff isn’t very friendly. A storm rolled through shorty after our arrival, we were all told to exit the water, they closed all the pools. Understandable because of weather, there was never an announcement to let us know it was now okay to swim. Wasted time standing around waiting for more info. Asked one of the lifeguard's if we could get in the snorkel pool, he said yes. We started to get our stuff on and get in. The lifeguard stopped us and told us oh no you can’t get in here. I said well I asked and you didn't say that. He proceeded to argue with me that I didn’t ask him the right question. So please make sure you ask word for word every single question. Because asking “can we get in here?” Isn’t specific enough. He could have easily pointed me in the right direction the first time I asked. The big snorkel pool is disgusting, so much algae, the bottom was so slimy all you could do was slide around. Got different answer’s from employees of the slide was open or not. Seems like no one is on the same page here. Stopped into the Schooner’s bar & grill for the lunch we had already paid for as part of the excursion. Seen frozen fries laying out on the counter waiting to be cooked, not really frozen anymore, that were being picked at by birds. We chose not to eat at all after seeing the way the fries were left. I have been on many cruises and done many different excursions but have never had such a bad experience. Maybe they should just focus on the turtles, that’s seems to be the only good thing...

I don't normally go to attractions where they have animals prefer to see them in their natural habitat, so I'll give it a miss Save your money for the sting ray coral reef tour Theyre in the wild at least Video footage and photographs from the farm show thousands of endangered sea turtles being kept in dirty, packed touch tanks. Swimming in water filled with their own waste, the turtles fight for food, bite each other and even resort to cannibalism. Many suffer from disease and birth defects, such as injured fins or missing eyes.

“Life on the Cayman Turtle Farm is a far contrast from how sea turtles live in the wild,” said Elizabeth Hogan, Oceans and Wildlife Campaigns Manager at WSPA. “It’s truly horrific to see this type of neglect and cruelty taking place at a tourist attraction. Not to mention the fact that these foul conditions aren’t only affecting the resident turtles—humans could be at risk, as well.”

As part of its attraction, the farm encourages visitors to touch and pick up the sea turtles. However, WSPA tested and found traces of Salmonella, E. coli, and Vibrio vulnificus in the turtle touch tank waters—meaning that visitors who touch the turtles are at risk for contracting these diseases and then possibly spreading them to fellow passengers back on board their cruise ships. According to a 2012 poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, 69% of cruise ship passengers who visited the Cayman Turtle Farm since 2009 were unaware of these health risks, and the majority would not have touched the sea turtles, had they known.

“The bottom line is that the farm is currently posing great threats to sea turtle welfare and human health,” added Hogan. “We want to help the farm change for the better, but its unwillingness to meet us halfway is posing a...