Bakers Bay

Although in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean, many corals live in shallow water far from any land, and exist in nearly zero nutrient conditions. But corals in the Bahamas and Caribbean thrive in shallow water near land, and their existence depends on the way the land filters the nutrients. In the Bahamas, mangrove communities act as filters between the nutrients of the land and the sea.

If you remove a mangrove from a shore near a reef, you remove the filter.

Every coastal coral reef contains small amounts of algae and phytoplankton growing here and there. When a sustained unnatural act creates an influx of nutrients, the plants respond in kind, quickly growing and smothering the coral structures, suffocating the coral polyps.

The death of the coral polyps creates a chain reaction because all the other creatures of the reef rely on the corals being alive. Just as a forest is no longer a forest if the trees are dead.

All three coral scientists who have visited the Bakers Bay site, each acting independently from the other, has pronounced the Bakers Bay project a disaster for the island's coral reef.

There isn't any if's or but's about it.

There isn't anything the developer can do to avoid it unless they drastically change their development plan.

There isn't any question in the coral scientific community. A consensus of relevant scientists back the position of the visiting coral scientists (and therefore of Save Guana Cay Reef.) Although hundreds of coral scientists and marine conservationists have commented and contributed to the Bakers Bay discussion, not a single one has taken the position of Discovery Land Company and its hired biologists.

So, why?

First, building the marina by gutting the island's mangroves removes the filter between the reef and the land - creating a near instant and permanent nutrient load directly into the reef. Then, by creating ten years of construction activities, which includes oil spills, clear-cutting, silt-creation and more, Bakers Bay is adding layers of nutrient loads into the reef. Already, these are death sentences for the reef.

But it's not over yet, because four elements in the completed Bakers Bay project plan also spell death to the reef: the existence of the marina, the massive alteration of the landscape, the dense housing and subsequent sewage issues, and, above all else, the golf course itself.

Great Guana Cay is a limestone island. If you pour a glass of water onto an exposed piece of the island's bedrock on a dry day, the water will stick around for a few seconds, and then disappear.