Bahama Pundit

Good News and Bad News About Sharks

by Larry Smith

“I am the shark among the fishes, and the Ganges among the rivers.” --Bhagavad Gita

Well folks, when it comes to sharks - we have some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that sharks - like most other big fish in the ocean - are not long for this world if we continue overfishing on an industrial-scale.

The good news is that because driftnet and longline fishing are banned in the Bahamas, our shark populations are relatively stable. In fact, National Geographic described Bahamian waters as a relative "Eden" for sharks compared to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, sharks have always suffered from an image problem. People tend to regard them as serial killers and fishing competitors. But to Aleksandra Maljković, a doctoral student in marine ecology at Canada's Simon Fraser University, they are a fascinating research subject.

The Port at Arawak Cay—All Things Considered

by Larry Smith

In this space recently I reviewed plans to move the container port to Arawak Cay in the context of revitalising the city of Nassau. But there has been an unfortunate failure to communicate on this project, and some of the parameters discussed earlier have changed.

So I met with the board of directors of the Arawak Cay Port Development Company (APD) last week for an authoritative update.

The latest draft of the agreement between the government and the developers (which could be the final version) is now at the Office of the Prime Minister. Expectations are that it will be signed within days, after which contractors would be mobilised to begin work.

If this happens, the deal will have taken one year to conclude, at a cost to APD's shareholders of about a million dollars so far. Those shareholders include the entire Bahamian shipping industry - 19 partners in all. They range from domestic and international shippers to stevedoring firms, dry bulk importers, and ferry operators.

Another New Dawn for the Revitalisation of the City of Nassau

by Larry Smith

On the banks of the St Lawrence River, at the very spot where the city of Montreal was founded over three centuries ago, stands a remarkable structure built in 1992 atop the remains of a Victorian office building.

The Museum of Archaeology and History entombs the city's origins on the site of an earlier Iroquois settlement known as Hochelaga. This archeological crypt preserves the remains of Montreal's history from every settlement period - in situ. And more than 350,000 people visit this amazing time capsule every year.

Pointe a Calliere is the heart of the architectural and cultural heritage that is Old Montreal, a district energized by fine restaurants, outdoor cafes and people-filled plazas. And this restored historic zone lies at the centre of a booming, cosmopolitan city that ranks as one of the world's best places to live or visit.

Noted American architect Hugh Newell Johnson once said that “When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.” Put another way by Bahamian architect Pat Rahming, every city requires a dream recorded in a vision.

Recasting the City of Nassau - Part 2

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Renewing the City of Nassau is a journey of self-definition and discovery: a recollection of history that informs our national longings and forward thinking. 

It is an exercise of the Bahamian Imagination that should not be calculated with limited regard for a broader vision for the development of the island and Commonwealth which Nassau anchors. 

A city’s architecture, especially the capital, chronicles a nation’s history and showcases its ambitions, priorities and dreams – and its conceits and failures.

Recasting the City of Nassau – Part 1

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Two prominent figures sit in that most public of squares – Rawson, which in earlier times was simply known as “The Park” and was described by L.D. Powles in The Land of the Pink Pearl as “an acre in extent…on which were the broken remains of some benches and some dried-up-looking, coarse grass.”

From her Empire Day unveiling in 1905 Victoria Regina (Queen) et Imperatix (Empress) presided in marbled solitude in Rawson Square for 88 years until an unpretentious bronze bust of Sir Milo Butler entered this privileged space in 1993.

Field Trip to Andros —A Vastly Different Place

by Larry Smith

NORTH ANDROS -- Rivean Gibson Riley is one of the few Bahamians who has given his name to a geological feature.

A native of Staniard Creek - "it's like a gated community except we haven't got around to putting up the gate yet" - Riley was the first of an expedition to arrive at a blue hole near Cargill Creek that the accompanying researchers promptly named after him.

That was eight years ago, when he was just a young man wielding a cutlass. But since then he has earned an ecotourism degree at Hocking College in Ohio, where he made the Dean's list and won a scholarship.

Hocking is one of many colleges that send students to the non-profit Forfar Field Station near Blanket Sound. According to its website, students can "earn certification in SCUBA or sea kayaking off the world’s third largest barrier reef, learn the basics of blue water sailing, and wind-surf around uninhabited islands in The Bahamas."

That doesn't sound like a hardship assignment. But Riley has a tough job these days convincing his fellow Androsians that they can benefit from the environment that many of them regard as simply bush to be scraped, swamp to be filled or coastline to be polluted.

Debating the Ban on Harvesting Wild Sea Turtles in The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

The turtle is a central figure in aboriginal cultures. Many Amerindian creation myths say our world is carried through the universe on the back of a turtle - one of the most ancient and longest-lived animals on Earth.

And that's not a bad image because today we know that sea turtles navigate for thousands of miles around the oceans, apparently by sensing the direction and intensity of the Earth's magnetic field.

But it is hardly surprising that they figured so prominently in early legends. Extrapolating from historical accounts, scientists have determined that there were once more than 100 million Green and Hawksbill turtles - the most common varieties - in the wider Caribbean.

"Infinite numbers" of Green turtles were reported off the Cayman Islands in the 17th century. There were “inexhaustible supplies" off the Nicaraguan coast in 1827. And export data from the 1900s produce an estimate of a million adult Hawksbills in the Bahamas alone.

Clearly, surviving populations are only a fraction of one per cent of historical numbers.

Undersea Photography Sparked Bahamian Conservation Movement

by Larry Smith

Were it not for a series of serendipitous events decades ago, many of the Bahamas' most precious natural resources might have been lost forever. And it all began with the first attempts at underwater photography.

The Bahamas featured prominently in early undersea filmmaking because of our crystal-clear, unpolluted waters. The Williamson Photosphere (whose rusting hulk lies somewhere in the national archives), was a submersible device used to film the world's first underwater movie in the Bahamas.

Based on Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this silent film was a major box office hit back in 1916. The photosphere was later involved in recovering coral from the Bahamas to build a live reef display at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. And it served for a time as a unique underwater post office, where collectible letters were stamped and posted from Sea Floor, Bahamas.

Bahamian Links to Tarpon Springs and the Death of the Sponge Trade

by Larry Smith

TARPON SPRINGS, Florida—As the mist rolled in across the bayou, local community leaders gathered at the Heritage Museum here last Thursday evening to celebrate their shared history with the Bahamas.

This city of 23,000 on Florida's west coast - about 30 miles north of Tampa - has had a Bahamian connection ever since an "adventurer from Nassau" named Joshua Boyer started the first family homestead here in 1877. At the time, both black and white Bahamian 'conchs' were hooking sponges and catching turtles from Key West all the way up the undeveloped gulf coast.

In a 1928 newspaper article, Boyer reminisced about those pioneer days: "I came up the Anclote River on a fishing trip and by chance stopped off at Mr. Ormond's residence. I built a residence there, and the same year Miss Mary Ormond and I were married. Everything there was ours. The land and the game and fish were as free as air."

Sponger Money Never Done
But the biggest and best-known Bahamian connection - and the one that was celebrated last week - is the link between the Greek communities of Tarpon Springs and Nassau. Both had their origins in the sponge trade, which lasted less than a century and was one of the biggest revenue earners for both the Bahamas and Florida. As the song goes, in those days it seemed that sponger money was never done.

Marine Reserves and the Survival of Nassau Groupers

b y Larry Smith

Boil' fish fans beware -  the Nassau grouper is not long for this world.

According to Dr Yvonne Sadovy, one of the world's top grouper experts who is working with the Department of Marine Resources, data projections show that the Bahamian grouper fishery will collapse within a decade unless it is better managed.

That means we will join the other 33 countries in the region where this resource has been overfished to the point of commercial extinction. Like cod in the north Atlantic, the Nassau grouper - once the most common food fish around the region reaching a weight of 50 pounds or more - is now on the endangered list. In fact, 20 of the world’s 162 species of grouper are threatened with extinction by overfishing.

And one of the big reasons is their unusual reproductive behaviour. Every year at full moon in December and January, Nassau groupers migrate long distances from their home reefs to specific sites where they form spawning aggregations.