Starfish Beach offers a remarkable experience that marries natural beauty with an up-close encounter with marine life. The enchanting site is home to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of red cushion sea stars and offers a tranquil ambiance that captivates visitors.

Visiting the beach is free, but joining a tour operator is much more fun and educational. They’ll get you to the site faster and explain more about the starfish.

How to Get There

A visit to Starfish Point is one of the top highlights of any trip to Grand Cayman. Located on the quiet north side of the island, this secluded beach is home to dozens of vibrant sea stars in shallow, warm, and crystal-clear waters.

This family-friendly destination provides a tranquil ambiance and a memorable encounter with marine life. The starfish you see at the location are primarily red cushion sea stars (Oreaster reticulatus). These gentle and beautiful species thrive in the warm, shallow waters of the Cayman Islands.

You can get to Starfish Point by driving on the island’s public roads and beaches or joining a tour that visits this special place. The most popular terms include the Stingray City and Starfish Point combo, the 4-stop Starfish Beach tour, and the Bioluminescent Bay & Stingray City Combo.

If you choose to join a tour, you will board a boat to cruise from Stingray City and spend about 35 minutes at the Starfish Point beach. This secluded beach is one of the highlights of the Grand Cayman Starfish experience and is often featured on popular nature shows.

You will find plenty of parking spaces and restrooms when you arrive at the beach. Please note that lifting starfish out of the water is illegal, even for photos, and you must gently put them back on the ocean floor when you’re finished.

Snorkeling

As the name suggests, Starfish Point is a great spot to see sea stars in their natural habitat. It’s also one of the stops on a new 3-hour Grand Cayman excursion that features Stingray City, a visit to a barrier reef, and an exploration of Starfish Beach. Board a cabin cruiser and enjoy the experience at this postcard-perfect location!

The water is shallow and crystal clear, and you can easily walk into the waters and see the giant sea stars lining the sand. Children love this stop, and it’s a fun way to get a close-up view of the sea stars in their natural environment.

It’s important to remember that these sea stars are living creatures and should not be picked up, even for photos. They cause stress and can be killed by repeatedly being handled or moved. This is one reason why visiting this area on a tour rather than independently is best.

While the public park and beach at Starfish Point is a great place to see these fascinating creatures, you can find more by snorkeling. Snorkeling out past the point of the sandbar will give you a much better chance to see the more significant, brighter starfish that live on the seagrass at the drop-off. The experience can be combined with visits to Stingray City, the Cayman Crystal Caves, and Bioluminescent Bay for a full day of adventure on the North Sound.

Tours

Starfish Point offers a remarkable experience that marries natural beauty with an up-close encounter with marine life. This secluded beach on the north side of Grand Cayman is known for its stunning red cushion sea stars and calming ambiance. Be sure to treat the marine life carefully and snap some pictures without disturbing the beautiful creatures that call Starfish Point home.

One of the most important was discovering that predatory species were essential to ecosystems. These “keystone” species are at the top of the food chain and play an indispensable role in determining the composition of intertidal communities. Paine’s pioneering experiment demonstrated that removing these apex predators would quickly displace the species that relied on them to survive.

In this case, the predatory starfish pushed out green anemones, purple sea urchins, tiny stalked goose barnacles, and beds of black California mussels. Eventually, the community was dominated by a single species of sand dollar, Thais emarginata.

Parking

Starfish Point is on private property (Ivory Kai), with huge “No Entry” signs. However, the entrance to a public beach is just next door, so many excursions and boaters park there instead of at the main Starfish Point area. This is perfectly fine, and you can walk from there to the starfish. The water here is calm and shallow, and the starfish are easy to spot above the surface.

Just remember that picking and holding them up may look cute, but it is very stressful and can suffocate them. Starfish have a water vascular system that requires oxygen, so they cannot live outside the water. Removing them from the Cayman Islands water is illegal and can result in a hefty fine.

Visiting Starfish Point is the best way to see many red cushion sea stars in one location on a day when the weather is nice and calm. It is an excellent option for families, children, nonswimmers, and those wanting to take beautiful photos without getting too wet.

It is close to Stingray Sandbar, Rum Point, and Kaibo so it can be combined with other attractions on a Cayman Islands tour or boat cruise. It is an excellent choice for a family or couples outing that is reasonable.