Blowing Point

Dolphinarium Construction Begins at Blowing Point. I really am not focused on the dolphins. They are the national symbol of Anguilla. Their exploitation by a Mexican company, with the connivance of Anguillian officials, for the amusement and entertainment of hamburger-eating cruise ship passengers from neighbouring St Maarten, is curious at least. The general opposition to the project in Anguilla has not moved our government. Other than that, I have no interest in dolphins.

The three dolphins on the Anguilla rebel flag shown above stand for friendship, wisdom and strength, according to the website Flagspot. The three dolphins are coloured orange to represent endurance, unity and strength. The circle stands for continuity. The flag has a white background, for peace and tranquility, with a turquoise-blue base representing the surrounding sea and also faith, youth and hope. What irony!

The current official flag shown above, a blue ensign with a dolphin badge, was adopted on 30 May 1990 with much pride and fanfare. I remember the events well. As I recall, Colville Petty served as Chair of the committee, and I was a naïve and enthusiastic member of it. Little did I know at the time what use we were to make of these intelligent and friendly symbols not twenty years later.

The story that catches my interest is the report that the relocation of the dolphinarium from Meads Bay to Sandy Ground and now to Blowing Point has not been conducted within the rules and laws that govern Anguilla. Official approval and encouragement of wrongdoing is the real meat in the dolphin story. The Land Development Control Committee advising government has placed reliance on Environmental Impact Statements that have been described by the experts as mere “lobbying documents, insubstantial and shallow”. Their decision to approve the project in the face of all the evidence that it is of no advantage to Anguilla’s tourism plant, causes most Anguillians to wonder. The Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association is in the process of conducting a poll among its members. Preliminary results indicate that upwards of 90% are opposed to it, on the ground that none of Anguilla’s tourists and few Anguillian residents visit it. Placing a wild animal circus in a high-end city suburb has never been a town and country planner’s idea of how to add value and improve the environment!

This Saturday’s Daily Herald Weekender section carries a front page story by Suzanne Koelega detailing the whole sad chronicle of events. It is an eye-opener for anyone who is not familiar the story.

Here are some photos of the new construction under way. You can draw your own conclusions.

This shows one of the pens under construction.

This shows what I imagine will be the jetty out to the pens.

This shows the Anguilla ferries at Blowing Point harbour, moored not more than a couple of hundred yards away, up-current from where the dolphins will be caged. I understand the EIS reports hopefully that the diesel and gasoline and the noise of the engines will have no adverse effect on the captive animals.

The above photo shows one of the ferries darting out of the harbour, just a few yards up from one of the new dolphin pens under construction. You do not have to be a dolphin expert to imagine what damage this activity will do to the caged animals with their delicate echo-location equipment being assaulted twice every half hour in this fashion. Not to mention all the inevitable spilled fuel and oil. But, then we all know that dolphins like to swim in dirty water, and suffer no adverse effect from it.

I had thought that the new dolphin facility would be on the actual sandy spit at Blowing Point. We have been referring to it as the new dolphinarium “at Sandy Point”. However, the above photo shows it being constructed some distance to the east of the spit, and close to the business places and the ferry terminal just to the east and in the near background of the photograph.

Then, of course, there are the new homes that are going up to the west, down current from the dolphinarium. You can see one going up to the right of the above photograph. Heaven alone knows what it will be like to swim in all that rotting, uneaten, dead fish and dolphin excrement that will be flowing in their direction. And, where will the Anguillians who used to picnic on this pristine location go to enjoy themselves in the future? And, what is going to happen to these “fish” when the next, inevitable hurricane strikes?

I am told that one bus driver who has a lucrative contract to take the cruise ship passengers from St Maarten, who are the main users of the dolphinarium, and two ferry boat operators, who have similar contracts, were the only lobbyists in favour of the dolphinarium. Their alleged mortgages outweighed all the other interests in moving the government of the day to approve the project.

How will the Hon Hubert Hughes answer to his political constituents when the inevitable merde hits the propeller, I ask myself? As the Chief Minister has admitted in another context, “Mistakes have been made.”

Dolphin steak, anyone?

RSPB-BOTs

Commitment No 7: Review the Range, Quality and Availability of Baseline Data for Natural Resources and Biodiversity.

This was the seventh commitment made by the government of Anguilla, like other OT governments which in the year 2001 signed up to an Environmental Charter [link here] .

Dr Mike Pienkowski is the Chairman of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum. He was engaged as a consultant to examine how we were performing under our Charter. He prepared a Report of August 2007. His Report measures performance by the year 2007 of UKOTs and the UK Government in implementing the 2001 Environment Charters. A copy of his 19-page Report can be read [link here].

According to the Report, Anguilla is doing about average in meeting its obligations in relation to this commitment. There are some taxa and natural resources for which base-line data have been collected and made available. [A taxon (plural taxa), or taxonomic unit, is a name designating an organism or group of organisms. A taxon is assigned a rank and can be placed at a particular level in a systematic hierarchy reflecting evolutionary relationships: [link here]]. Similarly, there are some taxa and natural resources for which there are, apparently, monitoring programmes in Anguilla. In this, we are said to be similar to such territories as Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos. But, we are said to have to do a lot to catch up with Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Isle of Man.

I would really appreciate it if someone in the Environment Department or the Anguilla National Trust could enlighten us as to what exactly it is that we in Anguilla have done to meet this commitment. Does it only mean that we have been counting iguanas? What about the rubbish dumps that are developing on the road to Cap Juluca Hotel? Or, on the dirt road through the Hughes Estate from Anguilla Trading to Long Bay? Do these count, or are they irrelevant to natural resources and biodiversity?