Trouble in ParadiseBy Terri Morrison and Wayne A. Conaway Have you ever avoided telling people about a great new restaurant for fear that everyone would go and it would get too crowded? Or have you kept secret a certain fishing hole, or a perfect vacation spot? We all know what happens when too many people flock to a limited resource. Prices go up and availability goes down, and if limits aren’t set, the resource can become depleted and even destroyed. This is the dilemma many islands in the Caribbean are facing today. One elite location in particular, the Cayman Islands, can afford some limitations on access to its environment. While it’s a popular tourist destination (with its famous attraction, Stingray City) Grand Cayman is perhaps better known as an offshore banking and tax haven. Their banking industry, along with the influx of wealthy immigrants to the islands, has given Cayman Islanders the highest per capita income in the Caribbean. Caymanians (as the residents are called) enjoy a beautiful, conservative, low-crime environment, and are determined to keep it that way.
That determination can put them at odds with some outside interests: real estate developers, cruise ship operators and even gay tourists who feel that they were singled out when the Caymans prohibited a gay tour ship from docking.
Too much development and too many tourists can spoil any paradise. Many believe that the Caymans are a long way from reaching their maximum capacity. Does this mean that Cayman residents have come down with a bad case of NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard!”)? This sentiment is common in the US, where wealthy residents often stop unwanted zoning or development. US landholders have blocked (and even held up for decades) everything from airport expansion and highway construction, to low income housing and the conversion of old rail lines into hiking trails.
Should Caymanians guard their environment against the outside world? The evidence of repeated cruise line visits to Grand Cayman's port, George Town, is a case in point.
Blessed with spectacular (albeit small) beaches and some of the best snorkeling in the Caribbean, tourists already flock to the Caymans’s three islands via airplane and small boats. What difference would it make if large cruise ships increased their already frequent visits to Grand Cayman and built a dock there?
Plenty, assert Cayman environmentalists. Some environmental problems with large ships are obvious. The ships are large enough to endanger small craft, snorkelers and scuba divers. The ships generate a huge amount of trash and sewage. Despite laws against it, some cruise ships dump this overboard. The Caymans were the first Caribbean island to level large fines against cruise ships for violating dumping laws. (By the way, if you are a passenger on a cruise ship, it can be worth your while to provide evidence of illegal actions. A passenger who videotaped a ship illegally dumping trash bags was awarded half of a $500,000 fine!)
In addition, all large ships carry seawater for ballast. This water is pumped into ships at one location, along with some indigenous sea life and any local pollution. When no longer needed, it’s then dumped elsewhere. Simple pollution, such as oil, can cause problems, but the tiny sea life can cause even greater problems, when it is introduced to a new environment, grows and crowds out native life.
Obviously, cruise ships must have their own waste treatment facilities to abide by international standards, but environmentalists retort that even so called “gray water” (produced in baths, showers and other cleaning activities) is damaging to sensitive marine life. Actually, since some of the poorer Caribbean islands cannot afford to treat their own waste, some new ships have higher waste purification standards than the islands they visit.
Perhaps one of the most serious, but less evident, problems caused by boats and ships is anchor damage. Grand Cayman is girded by coral reefs. Although humans often treat coral as if it were some kind of stone formation (like stalagmites or stalagtites) coral is a living, growing and surprisingly delicate form of life. Even a brief touch by a scuba diver can cause injury to coral, and the Cayman government distributes warning pamphlets to all diving supply operators. The damage caused by a single anchor, dragged across a coral reef, is devastating. For this reason, Grand Cayman built and maintains 300 free public moorings for boats up to 100 feet in length. Unfortunately, these moorings are too small to secure large cruise ships, which can easily top 800 feet in length. For years, cruise ships have been dragging their huge anchors across the bottom of George Town harbor, plowing through the living coral like bulldozers, until there is nothing left but the protected historic sunken ships.
The cruise ships actually would prefer not to drop anchor and ferry their thousands of passengers back and forth to land, but would like to dock in the harbor. That would allow their passengers to walk off the ship and straight onto land. A cruise ship dock would generate its own set of problems, such as creating, dredging and maintaining a huge channel for the ships, which could further damage George Town's harbor. A busy dock could also endanger the divers and boaters who go out to see the wrecks. For these and other reasons, Cayman environmentalists have resisted building a dock for the cruise ships, and the government limits the number of visits that the cruise lines can make to their island.
Ultimately, the wealth of the Cayman Islands allows the residents to plan and have more control over their destiny. The poorer islands of the Caribbean are less able to resist development by outsiders. Only wealth, or a determined and dictatorial political regime (such as the current leadership in Cuba), can hold back development on islands with what the cruise lines term, "High Marquee Value," such as the Caymans’s 100 square miles of real estate in paradise.
Excerpted from OAG Frequent Flyer, April 10, 2002 |