Published On:Monday, June 28, 2010

By MEGAN REYNOLDS

Tribune Staff Reporter

bahamarama@gmail.com

A luminous green carpet of native plants spread out across the interior of Cay Sal and grip the sand dunes holding powder soft sand steady as waves pound the windward shore.

Fresh turtle tracks show evidence of sea turtles laying eggs on the beach perhaps as recently as the night before, a green anole lizard, endemic to the cay, appears for a second but darts away before it can be photographed.

And sea birds soar above as it is the height of their nesting period.

There is no sign of casuarina trees, Hawaiian scaevola or other invasive plant species, among the native scaevola (known as "inkberry"), sea purslane, bay lavender, sea rocket, and others.

The only evidence of human impact is the abandoned Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) base - two small dilapidated buildings just inland from the northwest coast - which were closed around 20 years ago when government deemed the cost of keeping eight to 12 RBDF marines at the cay on four week rotations no longer viable.

They were posted there to guard the point 50 km north of Cuba and just over 100 km south of Florida, a common drop-off point for drug and human traffickers working largely out of site from Bahamian authorities because of its location 145km west of Andros.

The few washed up plastic bottles, glass, old shoes, netting and styrofoam on the shore are further signs of man's arrogant existence on this otherwise undisturbed cay.

But the environmental threat to it posed by the massive oil slick from BP's Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico is what has brought me here, along with a team of seven scientists sent by the National Oil Spill Contingency Committee, spearheaded by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), on the Royal Bahamas Defence Force ship HMBS Nassau.

Oil slicks are spreading across the Gulf and have reached as far as the beaches of Pensacola in the Florida panhandle, killing marine life, clogging the beaches and forcing closures in the tourism and fishing industries.

The Oil Spill Contingency Committee and NEMA are now preparing for the possibility these plumes of oil, both underwater and on the surface, will be carried into the Gulf Stream, around the south coast of Florida, into the waters and onto the west-facing shorelines of Bimini and Grand Bahama, or south to the isolated islands and fishing grounds of Cay Sal Bank.

Add to this the seasonal threat of hurricanes with the power to pick up the oil and spread it further, and the threat is intensified.

Oil has been gushing from BP's Deepwater Horizon 5,000 ft below the ocean surface since April 20 at a rate of 1.5 to 2.5 million gallons per day as engineers still struggle to cap the leak.

The United States government is holding BP accountable for the biggest offshore oil spill in US history, and although it is uncertain whether the Bahamas government will need to claim compensation and how it would be done, steps are being taken to prepare.

There is little data documenting natural life on Cay Sal Bank, so the government is now rushing to document the area's thriving natural resources to estimate the cost damage caused by an oil slick would be if compensation needs to be paid.

No signs of oil were found by the scientists last week, but samples they have taken of sand, air and organic matter will be tested for the specific components found in oil spilling from BP's Deepwater Horizon.

They documented the lack of human impact on the three areas of islands on Cay Sal Bank.

After a 19-hour journey to Cay Sal and a short trip around the island on Tuesday evening, we sailed for around five hours to the Anguilla Cays, a narrow string of rocky outcrops on the southwest corner of Cay Sal Bank, where we found even less evidence of human impact.

On South Anguilla Cay we found a life-sustaining island of thriving native plants, such as the edible sea purslane, coconut palms, as well as large land crabs and rock pools filled with fat curds and whelks.

We spent Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning there before going on to Double-Headed Shot in the Damas Cays, north of Cay Sal; two islands separated by an ocean cut, both teeming with nesting sea birds.

As I stepped out from HMBS Nassau's large sea boat onto a jagged overhang of rock to land on Double-Headed Shot with the Bahamas National Trust's (BNT) ornithologist Predensa Moore and Assistant Parks Planner Lindy Knowles, birds swoop and cry out overhead.

Ms Moore advises me to tread carefully on the rocky ground as the holes and shallow caves are homes for the bridled terns. Brown noddys and white-crowned pigeons nest on top of the buttonwood, bay cedar, bay lavender, mosquito bushes and other native plants growing in these holes, while sooty terns make their nests in the shade underneath the bushes.

As we trek the land, marine scientists trained by former College of the Bahamas (COB) professor Dr Kathleen Sealy snorkel along the rocky shoreline noting the diversity and abundance of marine species.

Dr Sealy's former students Anastasia Gibson, 22, Marcian Tucker, 22, Jevano Smith, 23, working with Department of Marine Resources Assistant Fisheries Officer Jared Dillet, have already recorded sightings of conch, spiny lobster, and various snappers in shallow waters surrounding Cay Sal cay and South Anguilla cay before exploring the rocky shoreline of Double-Headed Shot.

All of these largely undocumented valuable fishing resources are now under threat because if the oil comes, it will attack the environment from every angle.

Mr Dillet said: "An oil slick also blocks out photo-synthesis so it blocks out the food chain from the very start."

The snappers, groupers, and turbot they have seen, could be poisoned by ingesting the oil's toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and in turn poison the sea birds who feed off them. Or oil will simply coat their gills rendering the fish unable to respire.

And the dozens, if not hundreds, of royal terns, sooty terns, bridled terns, lease terns and laughing gulls nesting on Double-Headed Shot, and probably the dozens of other isolated islands on Cay Sal Bank, could suffer the same fate as the thousands of pelicans and seagulls coated with oil as they blindly dive into the sea to feed if the oil spill drifts southeast.

During the summer nesting period the adults coated in oil from the slick would also be abandoning three or four chicks in the nest, marking a devastating death toll for the whole season of birds.

"You just have to watch the international news to see how the gulls and the pelicans have been coated in oil when feeding, and there is nothing you can do to stop that," Ms Moore said.

"But out here in the Caribbean we have all these other birds nesting - a huge diversity that could be impacted."

Birds are the clearest indicators of the health of the environment and from glancing at Double-Headed Shot, life on Cay Sal Bank is clearly flourishing both on land and underwater.

The sea birds nesting on the windward side of the islands appear to live without fear of rats, their most common predator, or shortage of food, as crabs scurry across the shallow pools and sea snails cling to the rocks.

They rule the rock undisturbed.

"If something was awry we would have seen some evidence of it in the bird population," Ms Moore said.

"But so far we have seen these birds feeding on the ocean every day and nesting on all of these shorelines we have been along."

A pair of protective bridled terns guarding their nest dive at us as we inspect a hatched eggshell, and sooty terns squawk above as we peer into a rock and see an egg nesting on the dry rock-covered surface.

"This is a huge nesting site, and being out so far and isolated it is extremely valuable," she added.

"The sea birds stay on the wing for eight months of the year and the only time they come to land is to nest in the summer, when they come back to the place where they fledged, year after year.

"If their patterns change we can look for a reason."

It is apparent from the limited underwater observation marine life on the trip that Cay Sal Bank is also thriving.

Mr Dillet said: "Considering what we have seen from this trip I think Cay Sal Bank could be important as a nursery area in some places, and also as an area that exports larva to other areas in the Caribbean.

"We know biologically the area is productive and most likely important for species endemic to the area.

"It's an important nesting ground for marine turtle species, and we have seen a lot of snapper species ranging in size from juvenile to adult, as well as indicators there are a lot of conch in the area, so that is all very important for the fishing industry.

"We have to find out how much lives there and figure out all the different uses of the area and find out the value those things have."

The marine science team was unable to do deepwater dives on the five-day expedition as the dive gear, expected to be provided onboard HMBS Nassau, was inadequate (there were not enough tanks) and faulty (new O-rings were needed).

It was hoped this snag in the long-haul excursion would not be exposed in the press out of fear the public would lose faith in the mission to document the country's natural resources, but hiding the fact that key elements of preparation were overlooked in planning the mission is frankly not my job.

Poor planning was also evident from the fact that at least half of the scientists were not put forward for the trip until the day of departure.

But considering the drawbacks, these passionate, dedicated and skilled scientists, at the drop of a hat, left everything to get out to Cay Sal in bad weather, cramped conditions and with limited resources.

Mr Tucker, who took time off work as a diver for Stuart Cove's Blue Adventures to essentially volunteer at the last minute for the job, hopes to return to Cay Sal Bank with the proper equipment to do what he was trained to do - underwater transects to calculate the economic value of marine life in the area.

He said: "We want to value this area and in order to do that we have to look at it from an economic standpoint.

"These things are how we make money from the environment on the most fundamental level, fishermen make money from these things, and we want to find out how many of these resources are there so if the oil spill does come to this area we can say this is directly affecting this area and these valuable species.

"If it destroys the reef you can put a value on it."

At this point the actual productivity of marine species in the Cay Sal area can only be estimated.

But from the sighting of a baby turtle, juvenile yellow-tail snappers, and a rare stingray on just a 40 minute swim off South Anguilla Cay; and then the large sea turtle we saw come up for air off the Anguilla Cays, and the haul of over a dozen red and yellow-tail snapper reeled in by marines fishing off the back of HMBS Nassau near Cay Sal on Tuesday night; these waters are clearly valuable fishing grounds.

But the value of the Cay Sal Bank, largely owing to its isolated location and lack of human impact, means it is also highly vulnerable.

It cannot be protected from oil slicks by boons and other reactive measures being prepared by the National Oil Spill Contingency Team, experts say.

And the resources needed to study and protect such an area, by making it a national park for example, may be considered too great.

The RBDF struggles to keep out wise Cuban poachers who work from the base of a "mother ship" anchored in nearby Cuban waters and come onto Cay Sal Bank on smaller boats which HMBS Nassau is too slow to catch before the poachers get away with Bahamian fish and lobster, a marine told me.

Furthermore with the 10-year-old HMBS Nassau marines do not have the technology to read instant weather reports let alone track boats in far off waters.

"In an ideal world there would be sufficient funds and training and proper radar and sonar communications to properly police the waters of the Bahamas," Mr Dillet said.

"The area is very sensitive to poaching, pollution, and we don't know as much about it as we would like to.

"It would be nice to be able to quantify all the biological aspects of this particular locality, but even that requires monitoring, because everything changes over time, and then you throw in the possibility of an oil spill and it can change all over again.

"It would be a shame to lose it before we know what we had in the first place."

Ideally the resources to protect this pristine bank and continue to study it would be provided as a matter of priority.

But for that to happen we need to wake up and get our priorities straight.

These places - the Cay Sal Bank, Great Bahama Bank and Little Bahama Bank - are among the most beautiful on earth and are thriving with some of the planet's most precious natural resources.

Yet Bahamians continue to produce more waste than necessary and trash our islands and seas with soda cans, beer bottles, plastic straws, paper napkins, or styrofoam plates and cups, without a thought for the impact it might have.

Even on HMBS Nassau marines are provided "disposable" styrofoam cups, plates and bowls for their meals, snacks and drinks, and plastic forks and spoons instead of reusable utensils.

Their garbage amounted to at least a dozen bags at the back of the ship in just five days with less than the usual full crew of 52 on the excursion to Cay Sal Bank.

But in the interest of cleanliness and convenience plastic, paper and styrofoam are the plates, bowls and utensils of choice.

These choices are made without a thought for our impact on the planet as our minds are absorbed in the ethereal worlds of the Internet, television or a hope for a heavenly afterlife, while we diminish the importance of the here and now, and escape the present reality with all its problems of crime, unemployment and pollution.

However, when we make the effort to engage in the natural world - and a serious effort across rolling seas it may be - we are treated with the realisation of our very real responsibility on earth and an awakening to our true priorities.

When we are taken away from the comfort of our homes, our offices, our protective families and friends, to find ourselves swimming alongside a barracuda or peering into the nest of a seabird on an undisturbed Bahamian island, our position in society becomes irrelevant; it is only how we behave in that moment that matters.

Our behaviour on this earth is far more important than any other agenda our egos may drive us to serve.

And just as the deeply embarrassed BP executives being held to account are realising now - it's not our world - it's theirs.

We share the planet with the sooty terns and the laughing gulls and the baby turtles and green anole lizards, and by keeping the environment healthy for them, we reward ourselves.