Green Pages

Fabien Cousteau visit focuses on TCI youth By Don Stark, Chairman, Turks & Caicos Reef Fund “People protect what they love.” That’s a quote Fabien Cousteau heard frequently from his grandfather, the world-renowned conservationist, environmentalist, inventor, and filmmaker, Jacque Yves Cousteau. Fabien Cousteau visited Providenciales in March, 2014 to assist the Turks & Caicos Reef Fund in ...

Looking out for the birds in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Story & Photos By Eric F. Salamanca, Ph.D., Environmental Research and Development Officer, DEMA Watching and listening to birds is a gratifying way to appreciate the abundance and diversity of these creatures in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Through distinctive behaviors and vocalizations, they communicate ...

School for Field Studies research targets TCI fisheries. By Amanda Greenstein, Kathy Lockhart, James Squires, Clarence Stringer and Heidi Hertler, School for Field Studies Center for Marine Resource Studies, South Caicos On the island of South Caicos, freediving is not a sport, but a way of life. Located along the western margin of the Columbus Passage (also known ...

Bryan “Naqqi” Manco wins well-deserved Blue Turtle Award. By Kathleen Wood, Director, DEMA Integrity and curiosity are the two attributes that stood out when I first met Bryan Manco (known to most as “Naqqi”) 13 years ago, when he had just returned to the Turks & Caicos to work for the UKOCTF’s/National Trust’s Darwin Biodiversity Project on ...

The community reacts to the White Cloud tragedy at Northwest Point. By Richard Green On the morning of April Fool’s Day 2013, Art Pickering approached the pristine reefs off the western end of Providenciales and couldn’t believe his eyes. Anchored between the popular Amphitheatre and Chimney dive sites was the 200+ foot megayacht White Cloud, more than ...

Coral reef health: then and now By Don Stark, Chairman, Turks & Caicos Reef Fund During the summer of 2001, we spent three months living on Providenciales and diving nearly every weekend. During nearly all those dives, we shot video of the dive sites. We have had the opportunity to dive most of those sites again in ...

Taking on native orchid propagation by seed flasking. Story & Photos By B Naqqi Manco, Department of Environment & Maritime Affairs Several years ago, I attended an orchid show in Tampa, where orchid growers and the orchid product marketers who follow them gathered to display and sell their finest plants. The rich chocolate scent of a maroon-spotted-white ...

Final “missing” endemic plant found on Grand Turk Story & Photos By B Naqqi Manco, Caicos Pine Recovery Project Manager The Turks & Caicos Islands have nine species of native plants that are found nowhere else on Earth —they are unique to, or in biological terms endemic to the Turks & Caicos Islands. Of these nine plants, ...

Captive endangered turtles return to the sea. By Kathleen Wood, Department of Environment & Maritime Affairs ~ Photos By Amdeep Sanghera, TCI Turtle Project For ten endangered sea turtles—six green turtles and four hawksbills—it was a long journey from a fisher’s boat back to the sea, but on January 30, 2013, they finally swam home, thanks to ...

DEMA’s Rescue & Collection of Endangered & Endemic Plants Project. Story & Photos By B Naqqi Manco, Caicos Pine Recovery Project Manager The “bush” in the Turks & Caicos Islands has frequently been under-valued. Often it is maligned as a dense, mosquito-infested, poisonwood-itchy thicket. But this tropical dry forest hosts high levels of species diversity, much of ...

Turks & Caicos Islands teenage turtles leave home. By Dr. Peter Richardson, Biodiversity Programme Manager, Marine Conservation Society You may remember Suzie, the adult female Green turtle and the first turtle to be satellite tracked in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Suzie amazed us all with her incredible 3,700 mile return journey through the territories of 15 ...

TCI’s first controlled burn in the pine yard a success. Story & Photos By B Naqqi Manco, Caicos Pine Recovery Project Manager The Caicos Pine Recovery Project (CPRP), overseen by the Department of Environment & Maritime Affairs (DEMA), completed the first controlled burn in TCI’s pine yards on May 9, 2012. The burn was supervised by foresters ...

Trees and the charting of Lucayan histories. By Joanna Ostapkowicz, B. Naqqi Mango, Mike Richards and Alex Wiedenhoeft Wood is a remarkable medium, revealing in its carved surface not only the artists’ intention, but more subtly, the tree’s unique history. Its coloring, grain and growth rings mark its age and how the tree grew. Other aspects, invisible ...

TCI’s “Beautiful by Nature” beaches are now certified. By Don Stark, Chairman, Turks & Caicos Reef Fund (www.TCReef.org) Everyone who spends any time in the Turks & Caicos, and especially on Grace Bay, knows that these islands have some of the best beaches in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean. And that’s not just local bragging. Grace Bay ...

National tree produces bumper crop of seeds. By B Naqqi Manco, Caicos Pine Recovery Project Manager There was a buzzing of emails back and forth between Caicos Pine Recovery Project partners in October as Nursery Caretaker Junel “Flash” Blaise and I cleaned and counted seeds from this year’s pine cone collections. The number of seeds was unexpectedly ...