By B. Naqqi Manco, TCI Naturalist

Tom Hanks and I have something in common. Both of us have found ourselves “cast away” on some very tiny islands during our careers, and both of us have established solid friendships there with nonhuman friends named Wilson.

My friend Wilson is not a volleyball with a hairdo made of sticks. My Wilson is much smaller, and not nearly as athletic. I first met him on the triple-crowned pedestal of rock called East Six Hills Cay, south of South Caicos. There he was, standing in the wind on a bare bit of rock — spindly, tough, and decidedly grey. I didn’t know who he was at the time, so of course I lifted him up, closed him in my notebook, and returned to the research boat.

Close up of Euphorbia wilsonii, one of TCI's tiny plants

Wilson is not alone in the choice of small stature made for him by nature. On islands as small as the Turks & Caicos, many of our plant and animal neighbours are smaller than their relatives elsewhere. Our Turks & Caicos rock iguana is the smallest rock iguana species in the Caribbean. We have the smallest boa constrictor in the world here, and two of the smallest geckos, so tiny that their scientific name in this print, Sphaerodactylus, is about as long as they are. Our adult Caicos pines are often half the size of their Bahamian relatives, and our Buccaneer palms squat on ridge tops as four-foot-tall trees rather than those of other Caribbean islands that exceed 20 feet in height.

Our habitats are tough on plants. Poor soil, constant wind, stifling heat, overabundance of salt, and limited fresh water conspire against all of the natural processes that plants must carry out to survive. The solution that some plants choose to adapt to these punishing conditions is simply to remain extremely tiny. Less mass demands fewer resources. Put one’s energy into reproduction rather than size, and suddenly there is a wealth of energy available where it was not before. A limited demand for resources also means that a plant with such a blasé attitude toward competitive conspicuous consumption can grow where other plants would choke, desiccate, and shrivel into dusty, starved, over-salted mummies. It takes a bit of effort to see these little plants, but they are worth a look as they help explain how life is sustained on small islands at all.

Many of these tiny plants can be found in salt marshes and salinas. Our national flower, the Turks & Caicos heather Limonium bahamense, is a perfect example of one such tiny plant. Admirers may need to get close to appreciate the beauty of the flowers, but a stoop to see them will reward the patient with papery white sepals, lined up in tightly-fitting double rows, each holding a royal blue trumpet contrasted by itty-bitty yellow stamens. The plant itself is attractive, forgoing leaves altogether in favour of photosynthetic rubbery stems in a waxy blue-green sea foam colour, or occasionally mauve. A meadow of it, interspersed with salt marsh grasses, or a cluster of heathers erupting startlingly from salina mud, display a rugged, subtle beauty that represents the Turks & Caicos Islands very well.

In some of the driest salinas, the Turks & Caicos heather has a companion that clings to rocks and creeps along the mud. Similar to its cousin the sea purslane Sesuvium portulacastrum, the dwarf sea purslane Sesuvium microphyllum grows where the larger plant can not. With leaves that look like miniature clusters of ruby-tinged Champagne grapes, bursting with stored water, and pink star-shaped flowers half the size of the larger Sesuvium, this plant enjoys its status as endemic to the Turks & Caicos Islands and Cuba. It is edible, as is sea purslane, perhaps a low-cal diet option compared to the more robust species.

A short jaunt up a dune from the salinas and one can find the grey ghost of a plant that no one could be ashamed of mistaking for dead. Crooked, compact, and covered with silvery hairs, the dune heliotrope does no service to its genus of otherwise well-known flowers. Cream-coloured blossoms barely 2 millimetres across and an altogether crunchy appearance reveal the plant as Heliotropium nanum. Looking dead helps the plants survive grazing by rock iguanas, and indeed they thrive on Big Ambergris Cay where the iguanas all but ignore them in favour of fresher foliage.

The octopus plant hides from herbivores.

Another tiny rock-loving plant is unique to TCI but is also just as inconspicuous — until it flowers. The Caroline’s pink Stenandrium carolinae squats in cracks of limestone bedrock on the tops and steep sides of ridges. The leaves — tough, hairy, red-brown — form a barely-noticeable rosette that blends into the soil colour. The plant’s flowers, which appear any time of year after rains, resemble small pink violets and are quite beautiful. When not in bloom, however, it adopts the same mode of protection as the dune heliotrope, by looking dead.

While the dune heliotrope makes itself undesirable to herbivores by looking dead, and the octopus plant disguises itself as not-a-plant, the burning match plant makes itself undetectable to herbivores by looking like it’s simply not there. Wiry, hair-thin stems in dull bronze and a few linear, needle-like bronze leaves keep Pectis linifolia out of the spotlight. This plant — if you can find it amongst the grasses where it hides — bears flowers that belie its true identity as a daisy. The flower is modified to be as inconspicuous as the rest of the plant — it has no ray florets (the “petals” of a daisy) and the central disk is limited to only a few elongated blossoms barely tipped in black and yellow. This colourful tip is reminiscent of a smouldering match head, hence the common name of the plant. Its seeds are two-pronged stickers, able to travel on animal skin or clothing, but wherever their travels take them they strive to remain cryptic and invisible.

One of my favourite diminutive plants is one that does stand in the spotlight, unlike the burning match plant. It stands right up in the biggest spotlight of all, the sun. On the harsh high windward dunes of a few islands in the Turks & Caicos, there lives a plant that survives by making itself into a sun-and-wind-pounded rock.

Bahamas buttonbush, Borreria bahamensis

And where else can one get to know my friend Wilson, if East Six Hills Cay is not on your island agenda? I have indeed met Wilson again on several other islands. He frequents East Caicos, West Caicos, South Caicos, and Salt Cay, but is strangely absent from Grand Turk, Providenciales, and North and Middle Caicos (his worldwide range is restricted to several other islands in the southern Bahamas). Knowing that Little Ambergris Cay had plenty of his preferred habitat — weathered rock slopes with no soil, where little else can grow — I made a point to seek him out when I visited the islet in May 2009. I scanned the ground for any sign of my wiry little friend, but found nothing. The mid-afternoon sun was at its highest as I arrived at the old coconut and date grove on Little Ambergris Cay, now comprising only three stunted palms, and I sat myself down on a slope of soft, dry sand in the shade of the only upright coconut palm.

As I put my hand down on the sand, I realised I was not there alone. Sharing my shade was a diminutive plant . . . sprawling, compact, definitely grey. I stooped over, brought my nose within inches of the ground, and scrutinised this familiar but strange looking little fellow. His stems were short, his branches were tight. He did not stand, but rather lay down on the ground, prostrate and supine, his middle twisted into a compact lump, his leaves hugged tightly almost under the stems. He was quite obviously cowering, terrified of something. The scattered tracks of passing iguanas explained his fearful posture — he had been grazed to within an inch of his life — and an inch of life was more than he could afford to spare.

Upon further searching I located several other Wilsons nearby, all likewise cowering as much as possible, hiding under themselves on the bare sandy slope. In a precocious fit of gumption, I slyly lifted one of Wilson’s branches and noted a few of the familiar black and yellow diminutive flowers and even two tiny fruit. I stood up and dusted myself off to continue on with my trek, satisfied in knowing that Wilson, or at least his little Wilsons, will be there to befriend me on Little Ambergris Cay the next time I am cast away there.

Epilogue: Wilson may survive on the remotest sea-sprayed cays (I visited him again on Little Ambergris Cay in March 2010), but he hasn’t survived the rigours of botanical nomenclature. Euphorbia wilsonii was considered to be similar enough to the pinweed spurge Euphorbia lecheoides to be combined with this species. Plant scientific names always favour the older name, so Wilson (1909) lost to lecheoides (1906, resembling Lechea plants). Tom Hanks may have lost his Wilson in the movie, but my Wilson will always be Wilson to me.

By B. Naqqi Manco, TCI Naturalist
Photos By Marlon Hibbert and Eric Salamanca

Anyone who spends time in nature and gets to know our fellow earth inhabitants quickly learns that human manners, while shamefully rare within our own kind, certainly stop at our species’ borders. Even our “housebroken” domestic animals slobber, scratch, drink from the toilet before licking our faces, and do all other manners of despicable things. In spite of this blasé ignorance of human cultural mores, we love them.

Some wild animals are a bit too rude to be contained within our homes, so we leave them outside. Cows are lovely to see, but few will argue that they’d make good house pets. They’ll not only eat everything off the dinner table, but attempt to eat the tablecloth as well. Let us not fathom the train wreck of culture shock that would accompany any attempt to constrain a water buffalo or hippopotamus to the rigours of Emily Post.

One creature though, in this author’s opinion, easily obtains the prize for the single rudest animal on the planet. At least the organism in question is thoughtful enough to keep itself far out to sea and away from our kind, but any concern it may bear stops there. This spring, it has truly pushed the envelope of just how much ignorance may be countenanced from a member of the animal kingdom. While they normally only visit inshore waters of the Lesser Antilles in the late spring, odd wind patterns in 2010 may have brought them more northward, and in droves they have been paying unwanted visits to Turks & Caicos and Bahamas shores.

Portuguese man-o-war

Beneath the float and sail are three other members of the siphonophore collective. One manages all of the consumption and functions as the creature’s mouthparts and digestive track. Another sees to all of the colony’s reproductive needs, and produces sperm or egg which, when fertilised, divides asexually immediately into the prototype cells for the four types of animals that make up a man-o-war. Lastly, the parts that work for snaring food, and the parts that make the man-o-war, in my opinion, the singly most obnoxious animal in the sea, are its tentacles.

Man-o-war tentacles are long, thin, and brittle. They have the approximate texture of a strand of spider’s silk slathered thickly in snot, and typically dangle down 30 feet into the water column when relaxed, flowing in the current in hopes of snaring a fish or two. However, for some bluebottles, as these balloon-toting weapons of localised destruction are sometimes called, the tentacles grow to over 150 feet in length. Relaxed tentacles spread their blue pigment out in concentrated spots thought to mimic small sea creatures drifting in the water, which attract prey into the deadly net of tentacles. The tentacles are lined with microscopic, venom-injecting harpoons called nematocysts, each with a trigger slightly less stable than the temper of a recently bathed feral cat, and infinitely quicker-acting. When barely touched, the harpoons fire, not only injecting their venom, but sticking the tentacle to the victim so that more nematocysts fire.

When the victim is a fish, the function of this method is to more severely entangle and stun the fish, which is then hauled in and eaten. When the victim is a human, the nematocysts fire in their venom causing extreme pain along with all sorts of other undesirable reactions. These can include lymph node swelling, shortness of breath, days’ worth of red swollen rash, and even complete and final expiration. A swimmer tangled in 150 feet of man-o-war tentacles, all vying for a patch of innocent skin into which to inject their natural torture serums, can experience shock strong enough to drown, or can even die from the physiological effects of the venom itself. And just in case the man-o-war doesn’t get its point across while alive, the nematocysts can still actively fire for weeks after the darn thing dies.

Drifting through the sea, these long-tentacled menaces literally throw caution to the wind, and go wherever the gales and breezes push them. Typically found in warmer ocean regions of the world, they most often occur in large groups (the collective term for men-o-war is a navy), which means when they reach inshore waters together they get to be obnoxious en masse. They do appear on some shores regularly and seasonally. Australia has problems with them on its beaches, as do southern Africa, south-western Europe, and Caribbean islands. Their presence demands beach closures, as swimming within view of a live one can mean its tentacles, or severed tentacles of others nearby, are drifting through the water within reach. Being as poor yachtsmen as they are, unable to see or hear, having no control of their sail and rigging, they regularly get blown off the surface of the water by strong gusts and up onto beaches. Imagine a lopsided purple balloon with an electric-shock string flying merrily out of the water and splatting onto the patch of sandy beach likely to be trodden upon by bare feet throughout the day. Once stranded on land, the man-o-war can’t do much but sit there and look colourful . . . and sting.

Victims of this sting describe a never-before-experienced sort of pain; intense, deep, debilitating; something like a bad itch gone horribly wrong. The venom is a power cocktail of neurotoxins and histamines that is about 3/4 the strength of the venom of cobras. Often, immediate treatments administered include vinegar or urine, or packs of mud that are allowed to dry to draw out the poison. Vinegar provides short-term relief, but is not advised for use because it actually causes the remaining nematocysts to fire more strongly, and it is more suitable for jellyfish stings (and the man-o-war is not a jellyfish); mud packs are a great deal of work for not much return; and it has been suggested that the urine solution offers nothing more than a friend’s opportunity to have an embarrassing story to tell later.

The best immediate treatment is to physically remove the tentacles (with an object other than the fingers; stings can even occur through gloves), apply salt water, and later soak in water as hot as is safe to apply to skin, which denatures the venom. Stings rarely cause death or long-term discomfort, but allergic individuals are severely endangered by stings.

Despite all of this awful stinging, the man-o-war does actually have some friends, albeit not very good ones. The man-o-war fish is a bug-eyed fish that looks as though it is in a trance. Its skin is covered in a special mucous and possesses excellent manoeuvrability that prevents the nematocysts from firing, and it can hide safely in the drifting tentacles and nip parts of the man-o-war’s meals and tentacles. Sometimes it does get eaten by the man-o-war in turn. Several species of clown fish also associate with them. The Australian blanket octopus may act like a friend, but only until it rips off a clump of man-o-war tentacles with a sting-immune arm and carries them around with it, poking the cluster towards potential enemies.

The man-o-war has far more enemies than friends. The very Dr. Dolittle-sounding purple sea snail drifts around on the surface of the tropical ocean regions on a sail of its own, constructed from inflated bubbles of mucous attached to its body at the edge of its lavender or mauve shell. If the snail’s bubbles pop and it sinks, it will likely die of starvation — because it is on the surface where it finds its favourite food: man-o-wars. Despite the sting, the man-o-war is also a common food source for the blue sea swallow (a type of sea slug, which incorporates the unfired stinging cells into its own body tissues for defence), loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles, and the mola (ocean sunfish). Despite all these hungry predators (which have to eat loads of the things, since men-o-war are made of up to 95% water) they still come close to shore in droves. In late April 2010, they forced the closure of at least one beach in Providenciales.

Beach closures are only one of the reasons of why I declare Portuguese men-o-war as nature’s single most inconsiderate marine animal. Let’s face it: dangerous weapons and a complete lack of locomotion control, vision, and decision-making ability are a poor combination. If I had 150 feet of explosively venomous tentacles trailing behind me, I’d at least have the decency to follow the Australian carpet octopus’s example and use them carefully and selectively for defence. The man-o-war, though, just gets blown around by the wind, completely out of any sort of control, arbitrarily crashing into things and stinging whatever will receive its toxic harpoons. Researching these wretched little balloons-with-a-kick has allowed me to learn about their fascinating life histories, but it also sealed the deal on the declaration of them being the most inconsiderate and rude animal in the sea. Admire their beauty and eccentricity from a distance — they’re fascinating, just not very nice.

Sightings of men-o-war — and seeing one usually means more are coming — should be reported to the Department of Environment & Coastal Resources, so that their arrival can be monitored and proper precautions can be announced. Never try to touch a man-o-war, as they can sting even when dead, and through some materials.

North Caicos’ last donkey is a symbol of a bygone era and changing world.

By B. Naqqi Manco, TCI Naturalist

Kew Settlement in North Caicos is a small town – perhaps a tiny town; for even calling it a one-horse town would give a person the impression that it is big enough to have one horse. Kew Settlement doesn’t have one horse. But it is very proudly just large enough to be blessed with one donkey.

Liza and the author

The one donkey who graces Kew with her presence is named Liza. Someone once told me that all donkeys, as soon as they reach adulthood, look like they are 400 years old. Liza looks 400 hard, weathered years old. She may as well be several millennia. Who knows, she could have been the very beast of burden who bore the spiritually precious cargo from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Indeed “donkey years” is an expression referring to days of yore. Anyway, Liza is one decidedly ancient-looking burro. The first time I saw her, I compared her to a donkey I knew in my youth – Angelina was a Sicilian donkey I looked after when I volunteered at a zoo. Like all Sicilian donkeys, she was a miniature, just under three feet tall at the shoulder, but also nearly three feet wide. She was, as zoo animals tend to be, incredibly well-fed and since she had little to do but get pointed at by admirers all day, her stout body widened until I was certain I could lie down crosswise on her broad, flat back.

Compared to Angelina, Liza was haggard and bedraggled. The first time I saw her, she was grazing disinterestedly by the roadside at the eastern end of Kew. Her heavy “winter” coat was matted and flecked with bits of her lunch; smears of dried mud and mucous marked where she’d scratched her sides with her teeth or hooves. The thick mat of fur on her forehead was solidly tangled with burrs. Barring her generally unkempt appearance though, she was obviously healthy. She was robust, and bore a good balance of being well-fed and well-exercised. She might be a bit on the dusty side, I thought to myself, but give her a good solid brushing and she wouldn’t look a day over half a millennium.

It is appropriate that Liza looks ancient. Liza is a singular lingering reminder of yesteryear in North Caicos. Granted, yesteryear in North Caicos, by donkey terms, was not all that long ago. Only having been attached to the grid of development with paved roads and electricity since the early 1980s, North Caicos depended on donkeys for transportation no more than 30 years ago. It was sometime around the turn of this developmental era that Liza was born.

Determining Liza’s age has been an adventure in legend and oral tradition, and one that I embarked upon when Liza came to live with me in August of 2008. Her owner (who I remembered having seen ride her years earlier as she trotted waveringly down a then unpaved and narrow Bellefield Landing Road) had had to retire from being her personal steward (partially due to an incident in which said donkey dislodged said owner forcibly from her back). Liza needed a new steward, and dedicated donkey stewards are, surprisingly, simply not in good supply. It was my landlord who proposed that I take over the responsibilities relating to Liza, and remembering the pleasant-if-slightly-distant nature of Angelina, I accepted the responsibility to take care of her. And that is about when I had to re-learn everything that Angelina had taught me, because I found out that Angelina, wonderful as she was, just was not a good representation of an average donkey.

Liza is not necessarily an average donkey either, though. She’s average enough in that she is a standard – the most common type of donkey in the world. Standards are named for their size – their withers just about solar-plexus high to a tall man.  Donkeys shorter than a man’s waist, like Angelina, are miniatures. Donkeys large enough to mount a mare and perform the deeds necessary to produce mules are called mammoth jackstock (the notoriously large and aggressive feral donkeys on East Caicos are mostly mammoth jackstock, formerly used to breed mules there to pull the railcars on the guano mine railway). Standards are close to the size of the African wild ass, the rather colourfully named animal from which domestic donkeys are derived. Donkeys are ideal in that they are small enough to be easily manageable (at least when in a good mood), and large enough to carry loads upwards of 200 pounds.

Donkeys were probably one of the first animals domesticated as a beast of burden, and this domestication most likely occurred between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago somewhere in north-eastern Africa. African wild asses were well-adapted to the desert and scrubland habitats of the region: their bodies naturally conserve water, their long ears radiate excess heat, and their efficient digestive systems require nothing more than grass as fuel. They were also very well suited for domestication: they can easily carry a quarter of their own weight, their broad backs made good surfaces for packing or riding, and the milk of a jenny (female donkey) can be consumed by humans. By the time the great kings of Egypt were developing their funerary masterpieces, donkeys were common domestic animals in the Nile valley, and the artwork on the pyramids depicts this arrangement. Their ability to grow and shed hair as needed means they are adaptable to a wide range of climactic conditions. Their steady gait and habit of walking with one small hoof in front of the other means that they could not only make use of narrow roads, but of winding mountain paths. Donkeys have a popular reputation for stubbornness, but really, they just aren’t willing to do anything that they know will put them in harm’s way, and they are far too intelligent to respond well to anything but good treatment.

Rumours of stubbornness notwithstanding, donkeys spread first through the Middle East and then into Europe and Asia. Later, Spanish explorers brought them to the Americas, where they flourished in the American southwest and are still present as “burros.” Donkeys made their debut in the Turks & Caicos Islands as early as the 1650s, when Bermudian salt rakers travelled to the “Salt Islands” of South Caicos, Grand Turk, and Salt Cay seasonally to gather salt on the salinas. Donkeys walk long distances willingly, but they are patently poor seafarers and would rather not travel around on ships if given the choice. To ensure donkeys could be left in the Salt Islands between raking seasons, the Bermudians dug wells that the donkeys could access, and simply turned them loose to forage on their own when they returned to Bermuda for the rainy seasons.

When the Salt Islands were permanently settled, there was already a large supply of semi-feral donkeys available for the taking, and the skills of wainwrights and wheelwrights were employed to build donkey carts with large, solid wheels. These carts were used to transport salt, water, people, and goods as needed around an island. Eventually, as the Caicos Islands were settled during the Loyalist era in the late 1700s, donkeys were moved there for use on the plantations. Highly appreciative of routine, donkeys enjoy following a repetitive schedule day by day, a trait underscored by the story of a water-delivery donkey in Grand Turk who continued to make his daily rounds through Cockburn Town even after he had been retired. This tale has become canonised in the colourful children’s book, Where Is Simon, Sandy? Donkeys kept their usefulness straight through the Emancipation, during Her Majesty’s Royal Visit in 1966 (a donkey race featured prominently on the schedule of events), and up until the time around when Liza was born.

As I mentioned, determining Liza’s age has been an adventure in legend and oral tradition. The age of a donkey is important for a caretaker to know, because there are health concerns to consider as they age. Like most equines, donkeys can typically be age-determined by their teeth – the true age comes “straight from the horse’s mouth” in the ideal situation. Reading donkey documents reveals that the position and depth of a certain groove on a certain tooth should give a fairly accurate estimate as to the donkey’s age. So, one of the first things I did with Liza was to look at her teeth.

And I promptly shut her lips back up. Liza was clearly not going to be accurately aged by her teeth. The telltale tooth on each side was hideously twisted and curved, crooked and overlapping others, and there was barely a sign of the groove anymore. By her teeth, Liza was as I had suspected – not a day over half a millennium. By talking to people in Kew who remember her being around when they had their own children, and others who remember her being around when they were children (and others who remember her always being around) we determined that she was just about 30 years old in 2008. That’s not exactly half a millennium, and in fact it isn’t even ancient for a donkey. Donkeys are known to live well into their 40s given a good life. Liza was worked lightly: she was ridden occasionally and in her later years toted loads only consisting of freshly cut guinea grass for her own fodder. Liza was always tethered – this is typical practice of keeping donkeys in the Caribbean, where fences are difficult to maintain due to termites and pasture grasses are difficult to grow. Tethering consists of tying the donkey to a shade tree with a length of rope, in an area with plenty of green feed and a bucket of fresh water. When the green feed is finished, the donkey is moved and tethered in another spot. Provided the rope is long enough and the donkey is kept safe from harassment by dogs and unkind people, this system works, and Liza was well adapted to it.

Liza’s old tether was perhaps less than well adapted to her, though. Over the years the heavy, round rope had worn at her mane. Donkeys store fat for lean times, and they store it along the top of their neck. This thick layer of fat, covered by the coarse hair of the mane, lacks sensitivity and so she sometimes pulled the rope hard enough to cut the skin. Working with a few spare pieces of webbing strap, two stainless steel rings, and a borrowed sewing machine, I constructed Liza a comfortable collar that could be clipped loosely around her neck with a carabiner. Clip that to a new, strong rope with a swivel, and Liza was now much freer to move about without getting injured. Add a size F5 royal blue bridle from a donkey and miniature horse Ebay store and suddenly, she was the talk of the town.

The new fashion accessories didn’t change Liza though, and since Angelina had taught me most of what I knew about donkeys, and she was decidedly spoiled, I still had some learning to do. The first treat I offered Liza was that which is seen in every cartoon image of a donkey being encouraged – a carrot. Liza gave the carrot one sniff and promptly turned around and ignored it. So much for the accuracy of Saturday morning cartoons.

I found later that she did relish apples, but too many make her drool applesauce all over the place. She enjoys dried corn, but I was warned by some in-the-know people in Kew that corn can make donkeys “funny,” and indeed Liza gets a bit uppity and temperamental when she gets more than a mouthful of corn. She loves mangoes, and de-pits them by stepping squarely onto them with a deliberately placed hoof.

And speaking of deliberately placed hooves, Liza knew how to do something that Angelina never did. It is said that donkeys that are raised by other donkeys learn early on that kicking is not acceptable, but that donkeys raised by people only have to get their way by kicking one time to lead a lifetime of “I get what I want or I kick you” mentality. Liza, unfortunately, must have squared away a well-aimed footprint on someone’s sensitive regions very early on in her life, because even though she most often kicks erratically and haphazardly, she still possesses tremendous aim when she wants to. She only really kicks if she thinks she’s being separated from food that she wants (attempts to ride her or load her back are dealt with by the other end; she bites too), but after learning a few donkey control techniques I have avoided further bodily harm from Liza’s unpredictable temper fits.

One would think that a donkey that refuses to carry loads or riders and who kicks and bites would be rather unpleasant to be around. Liza is old enough to be retired – I hope to be able to acquire or build a cart for her, which is less stressful than being ridden but still provides good exercise – so her purpose for now is to enjoy that retirement. I try to make Liza’s retirement interesting for her, taking her on walks through the village (occasionally to visit her former caretaker) and through the trails in the bush, where she finds a favourite shrub, commonly called “donkey bread,” to eat. The highlight of these walks, for Liza, is rolling in the dust. When her hoof strikes a good sandy bit of ground, she begins dragging her nose and sniffing. Eventually she shifts and turns, then roughly falls to her knees, and lies down. Then, kicking and twisting, she rolls in the dust. The rolling performance is a favourite of the children of Kew and her other admirers, not because of the sight, but because of the incredible cacophony of gaseous digestive eruptions that occur during the rolls, and the astonishing auditory volume of the same. If you don’t believe me, look her up on Youtube. You know what to search for.

Despite the kicks, bites, and irrepressible flatulence, Liza has more good moments than bad. If nothing else, she is affectionate. She would much rather be with company than alone, and she enjoys being close enough to lean against a companion, nudge a friend’s chest, or even rest her head on the shoulder of a sitting confidant. She will stay like that for quite some time, just enjoying company. Occasionally she will free herself from her tether, and after munching a few papaya leaves – one of her favourite foods – she invariably heads toward people, usually my landlord or me, to seek out companionship. She takes pleasure in joining our neighbourhood roadside conversations, expressing her point of view with an occasional snort. Liza was a beast of burden at one point in her life, but she takes no shame in having transformed herself into an absolute and exemplary pet.

And who else has a pet donkey? At a conference I attended in Grand Cayman in May, I met a colleague on a conference social night who overheard me refer to “my donkey.” “You have a donkey? I have a donkey too!” Susan announced. Amazingly, she also has a last donkey – Lagerhead, the remaining donkey on Jost van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, is in her care. We swapped stories about our equine friends – Lagerhead has a new, custom-built cart; Liza chased a cat down the road . . . and we lamented over the fact that no matter how much water you carry to your donkey, they always knock the bucket over before finishing it, and always need more. “It’s like the song!” Susan exclaimed. I knew the song. “Yes! Exactly like the song!” Two other colleagues nearby, who have lives tragically devoid of donkey companionship, asked simultaneously, “There’s a song?!” And so they were regaled with a truncated and poorly-performed rendition of the Harry Belafonte Calypso classic in question. No doubt most of those present left with the idea that my colleague and I were nothing short of Third-World-crazy . . . toting water to donkeys, riding in carts, making tethers . . . but I was happy to know that at least one other person out there is a donkey devotee.

Logistics prevent us getting Liza and Lagerhead together for a play date, but at least they both have their human companionship. Anyway, perhaps adding another donkey to the mix here isn’t in the best interests of the settlement. I can’t imagine Liza appreciating Kew as anything other than a one-donkey-town.

Facebook users will be happy to know that they can become fans of Liza and upload photos taken with her. Search for “Lady Liza, Donkey of Kew” to follow her activities and updates.

Suzie the celebrity Green turtle comes home after a 3,700 mile trip!

By Peter B. Richardson, Marine Conservation Society (MCS)

On January 27, 2010, Suzie, an adult female Green turtle and the first turtle to be fitted with a satellite transmitter in the Turks & Caicos Islands, returned to her feeding grounds off the north coast of East Caicos. It was the end of a 6,000 kilometre (nearly 3,730 mile) migration that took her to seven other Caribbean countries in just under five months.

Suzie the green turtle

Suzie was captured and landed for the pot by a South Caicos fisher on June 24, 2009. Staff of the Turks & Caicos Islands Turtle Project bought her and later that evening fitted a satellite transmitter to the top of her shell. The project is a collaboration between local and international partners and is carrying out research into TCI’s turtle populations and turtle fishery. The project had brought several satellite tags to the Islands, which, when fitted to the shells of turtles, allow researchers to track the animals’ daily movements via the Internet. Through this satellite tagging study, the TCI Turtle Project aims to reveal new insights into the range of adult Green and Hawksbill turtles found in TCI waters.

After her release on the north coast of East Caicos on June 25, close to where she was originally captured, Suzie made her first foray in the media, with local newspapers announcing the first study of its kind in the TCI. For two months, project staff checked her daily tracking maps online, but somewhat disappointingly, she stayed amongst the inshore patch reefs and sea grass beds close to East Caicos. Project field officer Amdeep Sanghera and DECR’s Tommy Philips surveyed several kilometres of the East Caicos beaches close to where she was transmitting. They hoped to find evidence of nesting, but found none, and so each day they checked her maps online and waited for her to do something.

Then, on September 1, she made her move away from the TCI. She headed southeast and those following her progress had no idea where she was going or what she was doing as they watched scientific discovery unfold each day on their computer screens. By early October she had swum directly to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and then on to Anguilla, and because, like the TCI, these are UK Overseas Territories, Suzie made the news again. Her passage through the islands was excitedly announced in both the BVI and Anguilla press, but her story had already travelled further than the Caribbean. In the UK, The Times hailed her as an “anglophile Green turtle,” while The Daily Telegraph and The Metro newspapers respectively claimed that her journey through three consecutive UK Overseas Territories hundreds of kilometres apart had left scientists baffled and dumbfounded! The BBC’s online news pages featured more sober reporting, including photos of Suzie, a map of her journey and a link to the Seaturtle.org online tracking site. This was excellent coverage and led to the story featuring on at least 25 other online news sites from around the world.

Suzie's migration path

But this was merely the beginning of Suzie’s journey and she soon moved on, arriving in Barbuda’s waters on October 8. There she remained for two weeks and, unlike anywhere else on her route, her tracking data strongly suggested that she attempted nesting during the nights of October 17 and 18 on the beaches of Low Bay. Intriguingly, Antiguan researchers carried out a boat-based beach survey of Low Bay a few days later. They found fresh Green turtle tracks close to the emergence locations indicated by the satellite tracking data, but could not confirm whether the nesting attempt was successful. Suzie made the local press again and Antiguan bloggers claimed that because she may have nested on Barbuda, Suzie had come back to her birthplace. Her followers expectantly waited to see if she would nest again on Low Bay, but instead, Suzie left Barbuda on October 22. She headed east and then south, stopping at Martinique for just five days, where she generated yet more local press coverage, before swimming west into the deep Caribbean Sea. Now her followers were truly puzzled — where was she going?

After 24 days of swimming non-stop across the Caribbean Sea, inspiring much speculation about her final destination, Suzie took a turn northwards and eventually arrived at the southwestern tip of Haiti on December 2. Those in South Caicos following her journey suspected that she was now trying to get back home to TCI and predicted she would continue northwest. Surprisingly, instead of taking the more direct northwest route to TCI, she headed due east, and started swimming close inshore along the southern coast of Hispaniola. Fingers were crossed, hoping that she would survive the fishers’ nets en route, and a month later she eventually rounded the southeast tip of the Dominican Republic. South Caicos fishers talked of her imminent return, and when it looked like she might finally be coming back to TCI, she swam west to Great Inagua, Bahamas, her eighth country en route, where she tantalisingly remained for two more weeks. Suzie finally started swimming away from Inagua on January 22, and by the next day she had made it to North West Point, Providenciales, after a 145 day long journey. She spent the next four days swimming along the north coast of the Caicos Islands before arriving safe and sound off East Caicos on January 27.

The fact that Suzie’s journey could be tracked online every day at Seaturtle.org generated unprecedented interest and enthusiasm for the project along the way, especially in South Caicos. Amdeep and Tommy’s team kept residents there up to date by regularly displaying her most recent maps in bars, supermarkets, the airport and other public places around the island. They were often stopped in the street to be asked “Where Suzie at?” and seasoned TCI turtle fishers have been amazed to learn that their turtles travel so far. Some have even stated that Suzie has made them think differently about the management of their fishery.

The project team hopes to maintain this interest through the online tracking of four adult Hawksbill turtles that have also been fitted with satellite tags and released back into TCI waters. These turtles have a hard act to follow. Suzie’s journey may be the longest satellite tracked Green turtle migration recorded in the Caribbean, a fascinating journey that not only raised the profile of her species in the region, but also raised several questions, with perhaps the most perplexing being, “Did she really migrate 6,000 kms to lay just one clutch of eggs?”

You too can track the other TCI turtles online at  www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=398 and the DECR respectfully requests anyone encountering any turtles fitted with satellite transmitters in TCI waters to please leave them alone and report them to Project Officer Amdeep Sanghera on 649 332 8325.

Adapted from an article by Peter Richardson and co-authors that first appeared in the Marine Turtle Newsletter (www.seaturtle.org/mtn) in February 2010.

The Turtles in the Turks & Caicos Islands Project is a collaboration between the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources and the School for Field Studies in TCI, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the University of Exeter in the UK and Duke University in the USA. It is funded by MCS Ambassadors Anne and Simon Notley, the Natural Environment Research Council and the project partners. The satellite telemetry study is funded by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Chelonia Group. The authors would like to thank our colleagues in the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Martinique and elsewhere for their generous help, information and advice offered along the way. We would especially like to thank Dr. Michael Coyne for his tireless efforts working with Seaturtle.org and STAT, without which Suzie’s incredible journey would not have been so accessible to so many.

Seed banking protects native plants from future perils.

By B. Naqqi Manco, Senior Conservation Officer, Turks & Caicos National Trust

Deep inside an underground fortification, with thick concrete walls, little light, and frigid temperatures, something sleeps. The slumbering one lies with others of its kind, waiting . . . and they may wait for a year, or ten, or hundreds. Theoretically, they may sleep for several thousand years. Most ideally, they will never have to be awakened, but if they are, their work will be vital to the survival of their kind.

The sleepers are the amazing distance and time travellers of the plant world — they are seeds. The deep fortress that defends their sleep is the Millennium Seed Bank in West Sussex, England. Founded by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, at their Wakehurst Place site, the Millennium Seed Bank was developed with the aim of long term conservation of 10% of the world’s plant species by the year 2010. Comprising laboratories and offices on the ground level and seed vaults below ground, the facility receives seeds from all over the world and cleans, tests, and stores them for the future protection of thousands of plant species.

Cockspur tree

The Seed Bank has sent several representatives to the Turks & Caicos Islands over the years that the Turks & Caicos National Trust has worked with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on collaborative projects. In 2008, with a grant from the Millennium Seed Bank, the Turks & Caicos National Trust embarked on a six month seed collection project aiming to collect and bank 75 species of plants native to the Turks & Caicos Islands — less than 20% of our native plant species, but still ambitious.

Humans have been collecting and storing seeds for millennia. Seasonal crops are stored between growing times as seeds. Seeds are kept as medicines, talismans, jewellery, and even toys. Seeds that we eat as staples, which we call grains, must be protected from insect pests, water, light, mould, and other damage. Modern agriculture has adapted to the fragility of seeds, and agribusiness now makes sure that seeds are kept in     vacuum-sealed light-proof pouches, treated with fungicide, and distributed at the proper growing times. The survival of our food plants is ensured, long-term, by our very own need to survive.

But humans have not yet unlocked the helpful potential of most plant species. Many, due to our own ignorance, are considered useless. While about 80% of our modern medicines are plant derivatives, we find it easier to produce them in laboratories and manufacture them into capsule form than to grow, harvest, and process the raw plants. Before the Industrial Revolution, most of our colouring agents were plant-sourced, but modern chemical dyes have made many plant-sourced dyes fall from popularity. And even though scientists ever discover new, and potentially life-saving, alkaloids in plants, we often ignore the plants under our feet without thinking that they may have a use far beyond our scope of understanding.

One such plant whose uses have largely evaded global culture thus far is the National Flower of the Turks & Caicos Islands, the Turks & Caicos heather Limonium bahamense. Small, tough, and understated, this plant displays a subtle, stoic beauty to anyone who looks close enough. It stands out in its habitat only because it grows where other plants cannot — on rocky, salt-encrusted mud along the salinas and salt marshes of several islands in the Turks & Caicos. These few spots, many threatened by development of the constant dredging and filling of swamps for human use, comprise the entire worldwide range of this species. It exists nowhere else on Earth. Populations are known on Grand Turk, South Caicos, and Big Ambergris Cay; more recently it has been found on Middle Caicos as well. Salt Cay is certainly its centre of distribution, where it takes advantage of both the salina walls and low, salt-sprayed rocky hills of the island — habitats that stunt and kill most other plants. Turks & Caicos heather lives where it lives because it can tolerate salt, drought, and low nutrient levels; it also lives where it lives because it cannot compete with larger plants in other habitats. It also cannot compete with human development, which is rapidly reducing its available habitat.

Many plants, like the Turks & Caicos heather, face threats from human activity. People over-harvest trees for charcoal, burn vegetation for agriculture, introduce exotic pests and diseases that kill native plants, and bulldoze or bury plants that are simply in the way. Plants cannot relocate themselves — the price they pay for the ability to derive energy directly from sunlight is their locomotion.

Endemic Caicos Orchid is found nowhere else on earth

Individual plants have no ability to run away from danger, but they do have a way to move. Most plants produce seeds as their progeny. Seeds are typically small, well-protected, and contain everything needed to make a new plant. Seeds come in all shapes and sizes. The smallest seeds belong to orchids, and consist of very little besides a genetic code in a papery husk — they can float on the slightest air current to travel thousands of miles (the common monk orchid Oeceocades maculata, originated in Madagascar but travelled, on its own, to the Caribbean — including the Turks & Caicos Islands — on hurricane winds through the past century). The largest seeds belong to the palms, and while they cannot fly, they can float on sea currents for thousands of miles. Seeds have wings, parachutes, floats, sticky barbs and spines, hooked hairs, droplets of gluey resin, and other adaptations that help them travel to new locations by wind, water, and animal power. Some plants produce seeds in fruits that are explosive or ballistic — the Mediterranean squirting cucumber can blast its seeds in a jet of juice several metres away.

Many seeds not only travel physically, but also have the ability to travel temporally. If conditions are not suitable for the seed to grow, it simply lies dormant and waits until the right conditions occur. But in today’s world, seeds are almost as likely to land on a paved road and get washed into a drain to their demise as to end up somewhere ideal to grow. Wild habitats are shrinking as humans consume more land for development. Pests and diseases from far-off lands, accidentally imported by human activity and against which native plants may have no defence, threaten a sprouting seed. Drawing on an idea as old as agriculture, scientists around the world began working collaboratively several decades ago to create seed banks — repositories for seeds that would hedge against the extinction of plant species should disaster befall the growing plants.

Storage can be done with any seed that can dry out and be triggered back to life by the right conditions. Such seeds, which comprise most plant species, are called orthodox seeds. Orthodox seeds can be put through the necessary processes for seed banking, and survive in the seed bank conditions — some have estimated dormant lifespans of thousands of years. Orthodoxy is one of the first determinations that must be made before seeds are collected, a process that begins in the native range of plant species.

Collecting seeds from the Turk's Head Cactus

To start the collection process, botanists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Turks & Caicos National Trust teamed up to create a target list of species to collect. Using the master plant list of the Turks & Caicos Islands, the team first removed species of plants which are known not to produce orthodox seeds. The Agave century plants, Zephyranthes rain lilies, and most palms bear seeds that are recalcitrant, meaning they must be planted while still fresh and moist, and so were not included as targets. The team then focused on priority plants — most notably, plants endemic only to the Turks & Caicos Islands and southern Bahamas. These were classed as high priority collection targets, as were ecologically important native plants. Some native plants were made a lower priority simply because the numbers needed to bank seeds — 10,000 seeds is the ideal — would just not be available due to some plant species’ determined lack of fecundity or their rarity in the Islands.

The collection process begins with locating an appropriately sizeable population of plants producing seed (or fruit containing seed). The seeds are examined by hand for ripeness (to make sure they’re mature enough to collect), damage (to make sure they’re not filled with beetle grubs or mouldy inside), and fertility (to be sure they’ll actually grow). This is usually done by slicing a few seeds open and checking for healthy food reserves and plant embryos; this also gives the collector a chance to estimate how many seeds are in each fruit and thus how many fruits must be collected for the target amount. Unripe seeds are noted for later collection. This can be a tricky proposition, as some fruits ripen by bursting open, scattering the seeds hither and yon, impractical to harvest. In other cases, a plant may ripen its fruits perfectly, but the team may return to discover that the entire harvest has already been made by birds and lizards!

When the right conditions for collection are found, seed collector Melanie Visaya and team members first collect an herbarium specimen of the mother plant. This pressed, dried plant acts as a voucher for the team’s identification in the future. The location of the population is logged by GPS, and its size is estimated. Seeds are then collected into bags, but the team will strive to remove no more than 20% of the available seed from the plants. This ensures that plenty of seed is left behind to interact with the ecosystem’s food web as intended by nature.

Seed collection itself is simple. One team member likened it to the primeval practice of the “gathering” aspect of hunter-gatherer peoples. The practice is very natural-feeling and after several minutes becomes almost soothing and mesmerising. I’d choose fruit-picking over throwing a flint spear at a woolly mammoth any day.

When bags of fruit or seed are collected, they are transferred to the Middle Caicos Conservation Centre, where the herbarium specimens are dried and the fruit is laid out in cardboard trays to dry it as well. Fleshy berries, which go mouldy quickly, are sometimes cleaned by hand by squashing and washing in water. Fruit capsules that dry and pop open are covered with newspaper to prevent the all-too-familiar “ping” of seeds flinging forth from ballistic capsules, rattling across the laboratory floor. Some fruits, such as those of the southern Bahamas and TCI endemic Britton’s Hibiscus Hibiscus brittonianus, are covered with highly irritant hairs and are cleaned outdoors with protective clothing. Other fruit, due to its irresistible flavour to insects or rodents, must be dried inside the lab to prevent predation. A few offer pleasant surprises — the TCI and Bahamas endemic “stinky bush” Eupatorium lucayanum fills a room with a deliciously gentle minty-lavender scent as its fruiting heads dry. Others, such as the sea lavender Argusia gnaphallodes, created such a stench of rotten fish that they had to be exiled to an outdoor patio.

When the seeds are fully dry, they are packaged for shipment to the United Kingdom. After TCI export permits, UK import permits, and other paperwork is in hand, the seeds are shipped by courier, with their respective herbarium specimens and collection data, to the Millennium Seed Bank. There, technicians will clean the seed professionally in laboratories. Many fruit juices inhibit germination (the plant doesn’t usually want its seed growing while still inside the fruit) so they are cleaned thoroughly of juices and fleshy parts. Husks and capsules are removed, and parts are fully dried in special dry rooms so that all that remains is clean, dry seed.

The seeds then go through a quality control process that literally weeds out the unfit. Some are cut open to re-check fertility and pest damage. Groups are X-ray scanned to reveal hidden flaws or pests. A selection will be sterilised and planted on sterile agar in a clean room to test their germination rates and ratios. Meanwhile, the herbarium specimens are reviewed by plant family experts to verify the identifications. Most amazingly, while all of this work is happening, it is being observed by Wakehurst Place garden visitors. The entire Millennium Seed Bank workspace is bisected by a large exhibit hall with glass walls, so that all parts of the seed banking process are fully visible to school groups and garden visitors.

When a batch of seed passes this series of examinations, it will be sorted into containers, labelled, and taken down to the Millennium Seed Bank’s lower level. There, it will be filed into one of the many cold storage facilities which are held at a constantly low humidity and below-freezing temperatures. Here, the seed sleeps. It is only awoken if its country of origin needs it. The Millennium Seed Bank does not sell, trade, or gift seed without the expressed permission of the country of origin.

There, as of November 2009, collections from over 100 native Turks & Caicos Islands plants are held in conservation storage. The Seed Bank has been compared to Noah’s Ark; a time-travel ship with a hold of precious reproductive cargo intended to safeguard species against extinction. The seed bank now holds collections of all known island populations of Turks & Caicos heather, as well as several other endemic plants such as Britton’s buttonbush Borreria brittonii. Another national symbol, the Turk’s Head cactus, is protected there. In a dizzying regret of hindsight, the project began after the attack of the pine scale insect on the Caicos pine, and pine seeds have not yet been banked. This is exactly the sort of future threat, though, against which numerous native plant species are now protected due to their seed having been banked.

Not all seeds can be banked. Some seeds must be planted while they are still fresh and moist. A coconut is a seed, but try planting one that has lost its water reserves or has been frozen, and you would be wasting your time. Many palms and other plants are similar — their seeds cannot grow once their insides have dried through. These non-bankable seeds, which are referred to as recalcitrant seeds, pose a special conservation challenge that seed banking cannot meet. They remind us that while conservation storage of seeds is an excellent safeguard against extinction of some species, it is the wild habitats that must be preserved to prevent extinctions on the long term scale. Noah’s Ark is a good analogy for seed banking, but we must assure that there is somewhere for the ark to come ashore for its sleeping splendour to grow, thrive, and bloom for the future.

Tracking Hurricanes Hanna and Ike.

By Marlon Hibbert, Scientific Officer, DECR

Hurricane Ike engulfs the Turks & Caicos Islands

It is no secret that 2008 was an extraordinary year for the Turks & Caicos Islands. During a one week period we suffered the onslaught of two major hurricanes. They wreaked havoc on the people of the Islands and came at a time when the global economy, and indeed the economy of our Islands, were on a downward spiral. Fast forward to August 2009, almost a year later, and some people in the country have still not recovered.

Hurricanes are driven by warm temperatures and Hurricanes Hanna and Ike were no exceptions. It is published that over the last 20 years or so, the average sea surface temperatures of the TCI have risen (Goreau et al 2007). These data were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) long term records.

Here in the TCI, since May 2008 we have had the opportunity to track sea temperatures for ourselves. Four  Onset Co./HOBO® Pendant temperature/light data loggers were placed in two underwater locations at different  depths off Providenciales and West Caicos. Two meters were also installed in Grand Turk, but unfortunately, after the hurricanes had passed. Placed at depths varying from 142 to 38 feet, the meters were well positioned to record the effects of the hurricanes on the sea temperatures. After the hurricanes, the Providenciales and West Caicos meters were retrieved and the information analyzed in graphical form.

The results were astounding: at the locations in Grace Bay at depths of 105 feet and at 38 feet, temperatures fell from approximate highs of 30ºC to lows of 25ºC, a drop of more than 4ºC. This was also the trend at West Caicos where meters had been placed at 141 feet and at 42 feet. A few days later the same trend was observed for Hurricane Ike at both sites. As soon as temperatures were returning to normal levels after the passing of Hanna, the heat was sucked from the water again, dropping temperatures by an approximate 3ºC. Corresponding light levels were also reduced but, interestingly, took much longer to return to normal levels, indicating that the sediments that had been stirred up took a much longer time to settle out of the water column.

What does this mean for the coral reefs that are so crucial to the Turks & Caicos Islands? Corals exist and thrive in a very narrow temperature range and deviation from these temperatures can cause shock, mainly expressed in the form of bleaching. Bleaching occurs when corals expel their algal tenants resulting in a white appearance. This usually occurs with extended periods of higher than normal sea surface temperatures. (It must be said that other factors also play a role in coral bleaching with elevated temperatures being just one, though a major one.) Depending on the length of time that the corals are exposed to these drastic changes in temperature, bleaching may be partial or complete. Complete bleaching usually leads to coral mortality and dead coral supports reduced life. Corals also need light to grow; reduced light levels reduce the productivity of the corals and the ability to produce food, and essentially they come to a standstill.

Just like trees, corals display banding as measures of growth, and would likely show a very narrow growth band for period 2008/2009. Coupled with the shock reduction in temperature, lowering of light levels and increased sedimentation due to the hurricanes, the coral reef system in the Turks & Caicos suffered just as badly as their terrestrial counterparts and people.

Just as we are struggling to regain normalcy to our lives after the disruption of these devastating natural occurrences, so too are the wounded reefs putting up a fight. It is this fact that makes it even more important for users of these resources — fishermen, boaters, divers and snorkelers — to act wisely and in a manner consistent with the laws. Extra care at this time will give our reefs the opportunity to help themselves to regenerate naturally without adding to their stress levels.

As we continue to gather more information we are able to correlate this information to events that we see occurring on the reefs. In some cases it may help us to predict what may happen (more like an educated guess) on our reefs during future events.

If you are diving and recognize the onset of bleaching or any abnormalities of the reefs, let us know by contacting www.environment.tc. And remember, when diving leave only bubbles and take nothing but memories.

What impact does the Australian pine have on the local plant community?

Story & Photos By Chloe Hardman

This dense mat of Casuarina needles can prevent other plants from growing.

Tall trees waving in the winds are a common sight along the beautiful beaches of the Turks & Caicos. Locally known as the cedar, these trees offer pleasant shade. But have you ever stopped to wonder where these trees came from?

History

Very few people alive today will remember a time when there were no cedar trees on the Islands. Historical records tell us the cedar trees were introduced to Florida in the late 1800s from Australia. They probably reached the Turks & Caicos around a similar time. This origin gives rise to another name for the tree: the Australian pine.

Although they look like pines, these trees are not true pines. The scientific name for these cedar trees is Casuarina equisetifolia. Having leaves reduced to tiny scales around thin branchlets gives the appearance of needles. What look like cones are the fruiting heads which are dispersed by birds, wind and water. One pound of these fruiting heads can contain up to 300,000 seeds. This is just one feature that makes the cedar tree spread so rapidly.

Spreading fast

Have you noticed an increase in the number of cedar trees on the Islands? Many people have. Bambarra and Whitby Beaches on Middle and North Caicos, respectively, are areas along which you may have noticed the trees spreading over the years. You may have also seen them along roads or wherever land has been cleared.

Why do these trees grow so well along beaches and roads? Colonising bare sandy soil is not easy for many plants. It is a dry, salty environment with few nutrients. Casuarina trees have a partnership with microbes, helping them to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. Being salt tolerant and fast growing also helps.

Impact on other species

Being such fast growers gives Casuarina trees a competitive advantage over some other plants. There is concern that they displace native vegetation. In Florida the tree is considered a serious pest and is thought to interfere with turtle and alligator nesting. When a species spreads rapidly and causes harm it is classed as invasive. I am interested to find out what impact the Casuarina is having on the native plant community in TCI.

To investigate this I have been recording the plants growing under the Casuarina and comparing this to the plants growing outside of it. Many people told me “nothing grows under the Casuarina,” so I was surprised when I found a range of species growing under it. However the abundance of plants does appear to be lower under Casuarina, especially in areas that have been recently cleared.

Combination of threats

Casuarina is a plant that likes to grow where humans have disturbed the environment. It is often the first plant to grow back in a cleared area and puts down a carpet of needles and shade making it harder for other plants to grow. There is no doubt the dune communities would look very different without it. The further into the bush humans take bulldozers, the more Casuarina will grow and change the landscape.

Values and choices

The Turks & Caicos Islands are home to some truly unique natural habitats. Nine species of plants are found no where else on earth except these Islands. In contrast Casuarina trees are found on hundreds of islands across the world and form monocultures in areas which once were diverse.

What type of landscape do you value? On one hand, the Islands could end up looking like many other places in the world. On the other hand, leaving important areas of unique natural habitats whilst sensitively developing other areas could help preserve natural heritage. The choices the people of Turks & Caicos Islands make in developing the landscapes will determine which route is taken.

My research into the invasive plants on Turks & Caicos is part of my MSc degree in Conservation Science at Imperial College London, UK. I would like to thank the Turks & Caicos National Trust for working with me, particularly B. Naqqi Manco, Ethlyn Gibbs-Williams, Melanie Visaya, Bob McMeekin and Miranda Jones. The trip would not have been possible without the fantastic support of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, especially Martin Hamilton and Marcella Corcoran. Also, to the many people who have talked to me about the local plants, thank you for your time and insight.

Searching for the TCI’s National Flower.

Story & Photos By Sophie Williams

This species of the Heather plant is found only in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

As a botany student in the UK, I regularly see the beautiful purple heathers covering the hillsides and dominating the landscape. When I was offered the opportunity to study the Turks & Caicos heather, I was excited and eager to see an endemic species of heather, occurring nowhere else in the world. I have now learnt that this heather, the national flower of the Turks & Caicos Islands, is a rather elusive and mysterious plant.

One of the aims of my research in the Turks & Caicos is to map the distribution of the heather and three other endemic plants. This requires finding the plants and taking GPS co-ordinates on a handheld computer. From this information I will then be able to draw maps that explain where the plants are found. This will allow the conservation status of the plants to be assessed and we will be able to see just how rare they are. The hardest part of this research is initially finding the plants. With only eight weeks to locate as many as possible, this was going to be quite a challenge — especially for a heather that is only known from a few locations!

Description

Botanically speaking, the heather is called Limonium bahamense. There are many species of heather in the Caribbean that are related to L. bahamense but this species is endemic to the Turks & Caicos and it may be restricted to just a few of the islands. Past botany expeditions undertaken by the Turks & Caicos National Trust and the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew had elucidated that the heather likes to grow around the edges of salinas. A few photographs taken from these trips show that it is a small herbaceous plant, up to 30 centimetres tall. It has tiny purple flowers, surrounded by a white sheath clustered together around the end of red stem. The mature plant lacks true leaves but has a green stem that it uses for photosynthesis. It is likely that this adaptation is to reduce the surface area of the plant and so reduce water loss. Interestingly, when the plant is a juvenile, it forms a small rosette of spoon-shaped leaves that are subsequently lost as the plant develops.

Plant hunting

After weeks of searching throughout Middle and North Caicos, a team of National Trust staff, Kew scientists and students (me included) set off towards Big Pond on Middle Caicos in hunt of the elusive heather. The rain had been heavy for the previous few days making the trek more interesting as the trail was flooded. Within the first minutes of what was going to be a long day’s hike we all had wet feet from wading through the flooded swampy lands. At some points during the day we were up to our stomachs in water — all so we could get a glimpse of the heather!

It was well worth the difficult walk as on arrival to the Big Pond salina a colony of heathers was spotted. This was my first sighting of the beautiful plant and I was not disappointed. Around 20 heathers were flowering, grouped together in a patch of salina only a few metres square. It seems that this clustering of plants in a small area is a habit of the heather and it is not known why, when there is suitable habitat all around, they do not colonise bigger areas. This mystery is one of the aims of my research; to ascertain what are the key environmental factors that control the distribution of the species.

Expedition to the Turks Islands and Cays

A week-long expedition, travelling to Big Ambergris Cay, Little Ambergris Cay, South Caicos, Grand Turk and Salt Cay, was planned for our team. My aim for this trip was to find more heather populations. Our first stop, Big Ambergris Cay, resulted in the discovery of a small meadow bursting with heather. This area was previously part of a large salina that has been modified by development, leaving just a small area suitable for the heather.

The visit to Salt Cay was by far the highlight of the trip for me as we found the heather growing in exuberant abundance. The old salina walls, left un-worked for so many years, has provided the ideal habitat for the heather to colonise. It is clear from my travels around the different islands that the single meadow at Big Ambergris Cay and the whole island of Salt Cay are the two most important sites for the heather. These areas are the world’s stronghold for this species and so need urgent protection.

Conservation

An initiative lead by the organisation Plantlife International aims to identify areas across the world that are important for plant diversity. Areas that hold a significant number of endangered or endemic species are identified and then recognised globally as “Important Plant Areas.” The Turks & Caicos could join the global community in this initiative and specify the few locations of heather as Important Plant Areas. The protection of these sites would ensure the long-term persistence of this species. The isolated populations of heather are extremely vulnerable to changes in their habitat. Destruction of just one population would have a significant impact on the survival of the entire species.

Conclusion

My short trip to the Turks & Caicos has been a fantastic adventure and I feel very privileged to have visited so many of the diverse islands. The challenge of locating the heather across the Islands has shown me that this plant is a very rare species. The sites on Big Ambergris Cay and Salt Cay would certainly qualify as globally Important Plant Areas. It is up to the people of the Turks & Caicos to decide whether they feel the national flower is a worthwhile candidate for conservation action.

The author is researching the endemic plants of the Turks & Caicos as part of her MSc in Conservation Science. She would like to thank the Turks & Caicos National Trust, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew and Imperial College London for making this trip possible.

Studying the charismatic white spotted eagle ray populations of South Caicos.

Story & Photos By Jan Lupton

White spotted eagle rays in Turks & Caicos waters

Venture on a dive or snorkel in the beautiful seas surrounding the Turks & Caicos Islands and you may be treated to an encounter with one or more white spotted eagle rays gracefully flying through the water. In contrast to the southern stingray, another ray species commonly found in TCI waters, white spotted eagle rays (Aetobatus narinari) are distinguished by the beautiful and intricate patterns covering their dorsal surface. They are passive creatures and although they have venomous stings on their tails, they are never aggressive unless under attack; although quite shy they are not too wary of divers and will often pass right next to you.

There are very few places in the world where you may be privileged enough to see eagle rays schooling in such large numbers and in such accessible locations as in the TCI. For this reason, the populations here are truly unique and special. They also remain a mystery to scientists with very little documentation available about their life histories or behaviors.

What do we know?

Information we do have about this animal mainly comes from observations of captive individuals kept on display in public aquariums and a handful of scientific observations in the wild. Until recently it was believed that the same species was globally distributed around the worlds’ tropical and sub-tropical seas. However, genetic analysis has now revealed that this is more of a species complex (i.e. there is more than one form within the species) as populations in the Central Atlantic and Caribbean are distinct from those found in the Western Pacific.

Although white spotted eagle rays are commonly seen out at sea and around the wall drop-offs, they also venture into shallower lagoons and seagrass beds to feed. With a row of plate-like teeth, they are well adapted for crushing shelled animals such as crabs, oysters, clams and juvenile conch for which they forage on sandy bottoms. They may also feed on small fish and even octopus. The great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) is one of the main predators of eagle rays in Turks & Caicos. It is suggested that pursuit by one of these large sharks is the reason you may witness an eagle ray leaping high into the air in its attempt to escape.

Males will mate with more than one female over a mating season, reported to be during periods of warmer water temperatures in the summer months. Courtship behavior includes the male continuously following and aggravating a female, often inflicting bite marks to her fins and dorsal surface. If he succeeds, the pair will then mate with their ventral sides together. Males have reproductive organs called claspers which can be seen, when viewed from above, protruding from under the pelvic fins on either side of the tail base.

The gestation period for the female is believed to be about a year and then she will give birth to up to four young. Eagle rays are ovoviviparous which means that the eggs develop and hatch inside the mother and the embryos are then nourished from a yolk sac. The young are fully formed at birth and are around 30 cm wide. There have been a handful of successful breeding programs of this species in captivity but witnessing birthing in the wild is extremely rare. There have been a few documented accounts of newborn eagle rays from estuarine areas around the world, but very little information from the Caribbean.

Previous research on populations

More than 10 years ago, scientists at Bimini Biological Field Station, Bahamas carried out an extensive study (the first of its kind) of the eagle ray populations around the island. They identified 157 individuals by photographs and attached ultrasonic transmitters to 17 individuals which they were then able to track. They recorded schools of up to 60 eagle rays which were independent of gender or size. Mating or courtship activity was never observed and so it was suggested that the schools were either formed for protection against predators or for some other kind of unknown social interaction.

They also found that eagle rays in Bimini exhibited both high site fidelity (i.e. the same individuals lived in the same areas) and daily movement patterns that coincided with the tidal cycle. They were also only seasonal residents because they left the island during the summer months only to return again in the fall. Their findings were groundbreaking but also generated a host of other questions. Eagle rays are known to have the largest brain to body size ratio of any fish, they are social animals and unlocking the secrets of their interactions and their day to day habits was the aim of a study I set up in early 2009 at the School for Field Studies in South Caicos.

“Fingerprinting” eagle rays in South Caicos

School of Eagle Rays

The markings found on an eagle ray’s back are entirely unique to that particular individual. Every squiggle, circle, line and spot goes into the formation of a distinct pattern that can be used to distinguish one eagle ray from another. Scientists often use artificial tags to recognize and monitor individual animals in a population. Although useful for certain research, this method is often expensive, invasive and may cause stress and damage to the animal. Eagle rays lend themselves ideally to the use of photography to identify individuals from their natural markings, which is far less invasive and is also a less expensive way of collecting data on their movements and social interactions.

Since April 2009, photographs have been collected of eagle rays taken on dive and snorkel trips in South Caicos, and in particular around Long Cay where they enter the East Harbour lagoon from the open waters of the Columbus Passage. Between April and September 2009, 82 different individuals were identified, approximately 60% of which were females and 40% males. Specialized pattern matching computer software called I3S (see www.reijns.com/i3s), which is currently applied around the world in research on manta rays and whale sharks, was adapted to use on photographs of eagle rays. Three reference points on the pelvic fin of an unknown individual are selected and every marking within these points is then drawn around. This outlined pattern of the markings (or “fingerprint”) is then matched to a database of patterns from known individuals. This has successfully allowed the identification process to be much quicker and is the first time such a technique has been applied to studies of this species.

This project is in its very early stages but already we have some interesting findings. It seems that, like the populations in Bimini, eagle rays here also display high site fidelity with the same individuals consistently being identified at the same locations. Over 20 individual eagle rays have been seen more than three times and although there are many repeat sightings, there are still new individuals being identified almost every week. Around 60% of sightings are of two or more eagle rays swimming together and these groups are more often made up of either a mix of sexes or all females. Groups made up entirely of males are less common to see. In contrast to the findings from Bimini, sightings of eagle rays here are continuous throughout the year and courtship and mating behavior has been witnessed over the summer including an increase in the presence of mating scars on females. Interestingly, there are a handful of individuals that have been seen regularly at the same sites for over five months but others seem to be sighted regularly for a couple of weeks and then disappear. Is it possible that some eagle rays are transient visitors to these areas and some are permanent residents? Another interesting aspect of their social behavior is the associations they have with other individuals. Are certain eagle rays more likely to group and interact together than others or are these purely random assemblages?

There are still many questions to be answered but more information and further research about these populations will hopefully help lead to a better understanding about the lives of these mysterious creatures. Due to their low reproductive output and the susceptibility of their near shore habitats to fishing, white spotted eagle rays are currently classed globally as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This means they are likely to become endangered in the future. Scientific research to gain insights into their movement patterns and life histories is therefore all the more important in order to support decisions about their management and conservation worldwide.

This project has recently been extended to study the spotted eagle ray populations around Providenciales, with coordination by Jackie Walker of Big Blue Unlimited. We aim to collect as many images of individuals as possible in order to build up a database of sightings from around the Islands. We would be grateful for any details of encounters and photographs would be much appreciated. Please send to jackie.t.walker@gmail.com (Provo) or janlupton@hotmail.com (South Caicos). For more information about this research and to access the sightings database, see www.spottedeaglerays.com.

Tackling TCI’s turtle fishery.

Humans have hunted turtles in the Turks & Caicos Islands for centuries. Yet turtles still thrive here, in good numbers too. With their extensive, pristine coral reefs and vast swathes of seagrass beds, lagoons and tidal creeks, the low lying Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) provide valuable feeding grounds for thousands of green and hawksbill turtles. The Islands’ human settlers have exploited this rich turtle bounty since their arrival in about 700 AD.

Archaeological digs at ancient Taino Indian settlements throughout the Islands have revealed middens stacked full of turtle bones. After Europeans discovered the Islands in the 16th century, the Tainos’ subsistence hunting would likely have been replaced by commercial turtle harvests, which provided meat and shell for regular export right up until the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Nowadays, the economic value of TCI’s turtle harvest is relatively unimportant. Most of the Islands’ fishermen depend on the more lucrative conch and lobster fisheries, which supply the export markets in the USA.

But despite an apparent decline in the demand for turtle meat in recent decades, many folk in TCI still enjoy it. A few fishermen regularly harvest turtles intentionally to satisfy local demand from restaurants and private customers, but most turtles taken in TCI are caught opportunistically, by fishermen fishing for other species. If these fishers encounter turtles and can catch them easily, often they will be taken home for personal consumption. To date TCI’s turtle fishery has been largely ignored, perhaps because few, if any fishers depend on what is perceived as a largely incidental harvest. Nevertheless, in 2004 a provisional assessment carried out by the Marine Conservation Society (UK) and the University of Exeter with the Department of Environment & Coastal Resources (DECR) estimated that the Islands’ annual harvest of green and hawksbill turtles was likely to involve hundreds, and possibly thousands of turtles per year. TCI’s turtle fishery could be landing one of largest legal turtle harvests in the Caribbean.

Time for change

Over the years, the turtle harvest regulations contained in subsequent drafts of TCI’s fishery legislation have not kept pace with our growing understanding of marine turtle biology and are now in need of change. For example, the current Fishery Protection Ordinance states any turtle that weighs over 20 pounds, or measures 20 inches “from the neck scales to the tail piece,” can be caught at any time of the year. Female turtles and their eggs are protected above the high water line, but as soon as those same females return to the sea they are fair game to the fishers. Unlike the conch and lobster fisheries, there is no closed season for TCI’s turtle fishery and therefore there is no real protection for the reproductively valuable adult turtles in TCI’s waters.

Our previous research suggested that most of the turtles present in TCI’s waters are juveniles or sub-adults, and genetic analysis of the relatively small numbers of green and hawksbill turtles sampled during those studies indicate that most originated from nearby, or larger nesting populations in the region. Many of these larger nesting populations in the Caribbean, such as Costa Rica’s green turtle rookery at Tortuguero and the hawksbill rookeries in Puerto Rico, are showing strong signs of recovery despite centuries of harvest in the TCI. These encouraging results are largely due to concerted conservation efforts at the nesting beaches far away from the TCI, where nesting females and their eggs are protected from illegal poaching.

The TCI itself also has a nesting population of hawksbills, as well as the occasional nesting green and loggerhead turtle. But our research found that the historical and ongoing harvest of adult turtles in TCI waters has almost certainly led to these nesting populations being wiped out from the inhabited islands. We found that fishers tend to target larger sub-adult and adult turtles, perhaps not surprisingly as these animals yield more meat, and there lies the key problem with today’s turtle fishery in TCI. With no change in the management of the fishery, it is likely that TCI fishers will whittle away the country’s remnant population of reproducing adult turtles until it disappears, perhaps forever. This has happened elsewhere in the Caribbean in recent history, but it doesn’t have to happen in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

The way forward

The TCI has a sovereign right to use its natural resources for domestic consumption, but it is clear that something has to be done to reverse the apparent decline in TCI’s nesting turtles while balancing the needs of the community. An outright ban on turtle fishing would be impractical, unenforceable and inequitable, and is therefore not an option. Instead, we believe a solution can be found through an inclusive, participatory approach that involves turtle fishers. This approach is essential to inform much-needed changes to the Fisheries Protection Ordinance, and establish a more sustainable, yet stakeholder-led turtle fishery management strategy. In 2007, DECR Director Wesley Clerveaux recognised the need for action and invited MCS and the University of Exeter to return to TCI to follow up on our research recommendations.

At about the same time, long-term Marine Conservation Society members Anne and Simon Notley were looking to get involved with a meaningful conservation project after having sold their very successful business. A chance encounter with the MCS Fundraising Manager aroused their interest in our tentative ideas for a follow-up project in TCI. “Having sold our company a few years ago, we wanted to get involved in a conservation project, but neither of us had a research background,” says Anne. “My training was in law and Simon’s was in yacht and boatyard management. We have been members of MCS for 15 years, so it was natural to talk to the Marine Conservation Society about which projects we could help. We had always wanted to have an excuse to visit warmer climes during the winter, so when the Turks & Caicos Islands project idea was mentioned it wasn’t very difficult to make a decision. We are both keen divers and sailors, so turtle conservation was a no-brainer for us!”

After 18 months of planning and deliberation, MCS, Anne and Simon, the University of Exeter’s Marine Turtle Research Group and the DECR committed to making the project become reality. The School for Field Studies in South Caicos, which has continued collecting data on turtles around South Caicos since 2005 when they assisted with our previous research, also pledged its support. So, with the Notley’s financial backing in place, and local and international project partners engaged, the Turks & Caicos Islands Turtle Project was born. The project will thoroughly assess the status of the Islands’ turtle foraging and nesting populations, understand the turtle nesting seasons in TCI, and generate a comprehensive analysis of the TCI’s turtle harvest, including biological, economic and social evaluations. After two years of fieldwork, which will include extensive consultation with turtle fishers, the project will have developed a comprehensive draft turtle fishery management plan and detailed recommendations for appropriate amendments to the existing legislation.

New faces

As the project gained momentum last year, the University of Exeter recruited PhD student Tom Stringell to coordinate the biological data collection and analysis, while MCS recruited social scientist Amdeep Sanghera as the project field officer. Amdeep handles the logistics of day-to-day biological data collection on the ground, but given the participatory nature of the project’s aims, social science is a major aspect of his work. He has extensive experience of assessing wildlife use, especially in Africa where he investigated several situations including turtle hunting in Ghana. He was therefore attracted to the proposition of using his skills in the Caribbean. “My background has involved working with resource users to investigate ways to better manage the very resources they rely upon,” says Amdeep, “so the TCI project really attracted me, especially the project duration and the participatory nature of the work. In two years, you can really get to the core of the issues and get a strong grasp of what people feel and think. With strong emphasis on fisher participation, the project should allow stakeholders to have a voice in matters that are close to them, and hopefully facilitate changes that are, as much as possible, reflective of their views.” Amdeep will build a thorough understanding of the socio-economic factors that need to be considered in shaping the future of turtle use in TCI.

Life in the “Big South”

While Tom Stringell makes four, month-long research trips each year, Amdeep is based full time in South Caicos, the traditional home of fishing in the TCI. Wesley Clerveaux arranged desk space for Amdeep at the DECR’s office there, and gave him a room in “The Lab”, the renovated DECR accommodation a stone’s throw away from the beautiful azure sea on South Caicos’ rocky southern coast. Wesley also recruited local fisherman Tommy Philips as Amdeep’s project assistant. Tommy has made sure that Amdeep had all the right introductions in the fisher communities when he first arrived in November 2008. Already Amdeep has made significant inroads into the South Caicos community, making good friends, gaining fisher confidence and understanding more about the dynamics of the harvest and what it means to the fishers. Tommy is an excellent boatman who knows the local reefs and banks like the back of his hand and has been catching turtles all his life. While he teaches them the tricks of his trade, Amdeep and Tom have trained Tommy in the biometric measuring, turtle tagging and tissue-sampling methods needed to assess the status of TCI’s turtle stock. Together they work on the South Caicos dock, sampling harvested turtles as they are landed and chatting to the fishermen about their day.

By Amdeep’s own admission, this work, with its almost daily exposure to the realities of an active turtle fishery, has taken some getting used to after a spell of living in urban Birmingham. But The Lab is set away from the main town, meaning that while Amdeep is integrated within the tight South Caicos community, he also manages to find that all-important personal space. “After a hard day’s work at the dock, there’s nothing better than going back to The Lab and enjoying a long stare into the open ocean,“ he says. When Tom Stringell is on island for his research trips, Tommy takes him with Amdeep out in the DECR boat to the project’s research sites to survey nesting beaches, or catch, sample, tag and release turtles on the reefs and seagrass beds.

Despite his sociological leanings, Amdeep admits that these sampling trips are some of the most enjoyable days on the job. “I particularly enjoy the catch, tag and release sampling trips. It’s pretty exciting work and very rewarding, because very little research has been directed towards turtles here in TCI. I caught, tagged and released a loggerhead turtle in February. It was the first loggerhead turtle ever to be tagged in TCI and a very exhilarating experience for me. In fact every turtle we tag, sample and release during this project has the potential to bridge the gaps in our knowledge about these amazing creatures.”

The biological research also benefits from the School for Field Studies’ generous support. Research associate Marta Calosso takes Amdeep, Tom and Tommy to sites close to the School to catch, tag and release turtles. In addition, the School’s students and staff go out and collect these data as part of their program.

Anne and Simon Notley’s practical involvement is also integral to the scope of the research throughout the Islands. As well as funding the project, they bought Salt Dog, a 50-foot Lagoon catamaran yacht. Anne and Simon regularly visit the Islands, when they use Salt Dog to assist with nesting beach surveying and turtle sampling at the more remote cays and reefs in the archipelago, and to indulge Simon’s life-long passion for sailing!  He explains, “I don’t need an excuse to get out on the water. I love it, always have. But the most enjoyable thing about our involvement with this project is the sense of real purpose, having hands-on input and constantly learning about the turtles and the Islands. Anne and I feel unbelievably privileged to part of this ground-breaking project.”

The project is still in its infancy and there is a long way to go. But with two years of full-time presence in the fishing communities, Amdeep and the project team will be well placed to develop legislative change and a new, participatory and sustainable turtle fishery management strategy for Wesley and the DECR to take forward. Amdeep does not pre-empt the results, but is optimistic about the project outcome. “At the moment I imagine that the turtle harvest will eventually be managed by standard fishery measures such as size limits and closed seasons, measures that the fishers already know in the other, more economically important fisheries,” says Amdeep. “But the main challenge for me is whether fishers will be prepared to adhere to such measures. Turtles have been a traditional resource for many Turks & Caicos Islanders and the introduction of new, top-down management measures may cause some alarm, which in turn could lead to non-compliance. This project acknowledges the dangers of that approach and that is why we are working at the fishers’ level. It’s rare to find projects that put so much emphasis on the meaningful participation of all stakeholders. I’m confident that after extensive local consultation, any changes in the management of the fishery will not only be a product of the research, but will also embody the desires and opinions of the people most dependent on the turtles. And if we really get it right, the fishers will be actively engaged in the management of the fishery too.”

In order to complement the data gathered by the project team, the DECR is requesting public cooperation and requesting that any sightings of turtles, turtle nests or turtles landed for consumption be reported to the TCI Turtle Project at (649) 243-4895 or on e-mail to amdeep.sanghera@mcsuk.org. All information will be treated in confidence and will be of great value in ensuring that the project has national coverage and provides a full assessment of the Turks & Caicos Islands’ turtle populations.

To find out more, go to www.mcsuk.org, where we will also be featuring regular updates from the project.