We motor out of the settlement harbor. Like other cays off the 100 mile-long Abaco mainland, Great Guana Cay has been continuously inhabited since the 1770’s by the Bahamian version of indigenous peoples – the loyalists. When Europeans first visited the Abacos, there were indigenous people on these outer cays. The men and women of the Abaco out-islands were the farthest extension of the human migration – the Lucayans who fished and foraged on cays like Green Turtle, Manjack Cay and Great Guana Cay were the descendents of people who before them came from islands further south in the Caribbean – their ancestors – the mouth of the Amazon, Brazil’s rivers, Mexico, Colorado, British Columbia, Alaska, Mongolia. But the Spanish wiped these people off the face of the Earth.
When the loyalists, Americans loyal to the British Queen, escaped places like Florida and New York before imminent war in 1776, Abaco was settled only by a handful of Spanish, British and French castaways. The first loyalist to settle Great Guana Cay was a man named Colin Roberts.
Stephen Jenkins, who is piloting the boat, is originally from Nassau – a big city boy in the Bahamas. But he followed his business friend Johnnie Roberts to Great Guana Cay. “Johnnie Roberts’ great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was Colin Roberts. Or something like that. He was the first man to settle Guana Cay.” Jenkins, each ear pierced, eyes covered by wide Oakley sunglasses, has been an enigma to me for the past three years. I had never seen a photograph of him. I imagined him older; I falsely understood his unflinching commitment to Save Guana Cay Reef as some sort of elderly wisdom. No – I was wrong. Stephen Jenkins lives and breathes a code of honor – a Bahamian code of honor – a passion for place and history that people like me, anonymous in big American cities, may find hard to believe.
 |
 Queen angelfish on Great Guana Cay reef. |
Johnnie Roberts is the owner of Nippers, a beach-side bar that has nearly become synonymous with Great Guana Cay. Tourists come here from all over the world. Baker’s Bay salesmen bring their clients here. A lot happens at Nippers.
The first goal of our boat trip north along the Sea of Abaco coast of Great Guana Cay is for me to see everything in person. To see it in person, and to see its incredible transformation from when I was a teenager, is at once shocking and depressing. When I was young, Baker’s Bay was one of the most beautiful places in North America – a wide moon bay filled with sea stars and a clear turquoise water filled with corals, sea turtles and sleek sharks. In summer, when Bahama waters are calm, the bay would be dotted with ten or twelve sailboats, families would cook fish off the side of their sloops.
I witnessed the first tragedy of Baker’s Bay from start to finish – a deep water channel cut through Baker’s Bay to create an absurd resort for Disney Cruises. The dredging process caused permanent damage to the coral structures in and around Baker’s Bay, and caused some damage to the coral reef itself, on the Atlantic side of the island.
The water is still beautiful, the sky is still beautiful, but the rich coppice and mangrove habitat that lined those beaches is now largely gone. Heaps of sand are piled like mountains. The Bahamas is one of the flattest places on Earth – just ancient dunes from the sea covered with pine trees. Beneath those pines is a thick, knotted forest of hundreds of species of trees – the Bahamian coppice.
Because Great Guana Cay is one of a handful of first land masses between the Atlantic and Caribbean, this coppice habitat is a stopover for migrating birds, as well as first land break for five of the seven sea turtles species, all of which are endangered.
The piles of sand and limestone are visible from ten miles away. This is the guts of the former mangroves, and will be used to create a highly landscaped golf course. The golf course master designer, Tom Fazio, is a favorite of the golf magazines. But golfers claim his designs are overly landscaped, so rich golfers’ balls are more likely to roll the right way. Certainly, the artificial mountains of sand will allow him his wish.
There are plenty of other other barrier cays along Abaco’s coast, but three crucial factors make Great Guana Cay’s Baker’s Bay area unique. For one, it is unusually wide around the northern end of the Baker’s Bay property. Second, it was, up to now, undeveloped save for the tiny Disney ruins. And third, the Baker’s Bay area is the only area in the Northern Bahamas to host a coral reef of such magnitude. The reef is enclosed by a barrier reef; a fifty-foot tall coral wall. Inside the enclosed barrier are giant, ancient structures of coral, some are so long and wide that divers can wander the labyrinthine cavern systems underneath them for hundreds of yards.
 |
| Photo courtesy James Cervino. The Baker's Bay environmental monitoring team experimented with concrete structures to mitigate damage to the actual reefs, but the experiment proved a complete failure, as evidenced by this photo of algal infestations. |
We motor to the flushing channel, which is a large channel connected to the under-construction marina. Seeing the flushing channel for myself is amazing, because its existence is entirely due to the actions of the locals. In 2004, the locals asked Dr. Mike Risk, a world-renowned marine and coral scientist who has worked for dozens of governments around the world to protect coral reefs, to dive their reef and comment on the developer’s plans. His criticism was immense, and the crux of his criticism of the development is now supported by a legion of the most respected marine scientists and conservation groups, all who back his view.
But the developer took one of his recommendations to heart. This was to build the flushing channel. Dr. Risk was surprised that the marina plans had no real flushing channel whatsoever – meaning, the marina design was almost infantile; the water would have no movement; it would stagnate, become a putrid, cakey water, a death zone. He said in his report, “The marina design, and the estimates of flushing rates, need to be re-evaluated by a high-level firm of coastal engineers, again at arms' length from the developers. If necessary, a 3D model should be used to validate the results…”
Alas, the flushing channel was built. The developers then went on to say they made every recommendation from the Dr. Risk report. The Appeals Court agreed.
)
){kind=link}