Resort Report

New reporting hotline for green iguana sightings. By B Naqqi Manco, Acting Assistant Director of Environmental Research & Development, DECR Our very special endemic Turks & Caicos rock iguanas Cyclura carinata was recently down-listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) category from Critically Endangered to Endangered. This is due largely to decades of ...

How much of Taino depopulation was the result of disease? By Lindsay Keegan, Betsy Carlson, Michael Pateman and Bill Keegan Today’s “Talking Taíno” is brought to you by the letters R and N. First R—not the pirate’s favorite letter (which actually is the C)—but R0 (“R naught”), the mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease ...

Providenciales’ international airport started out as a handmade runway. Story & Photos By Bengt Soderqvist Pre-COVID-19, the Providenciales International Airport was bustling with flights from around the world, especially on weekends during the busy winter/spring months. In 2019, nearly half a million visitors arrived on the 9,199-foot runway and passed through the singular terminal building. International airlines ...

The Fauna, Part II 1942 By Captain Eric Wiberg In the Summer 2020 issue of the Astrolabe, the author detailed the first part of the tale of the Fauna, a 1,272-ton Dutch steamship. The Fauna left New York on May 6, 1942 destined for Grand Turk with a crew of 29 men and a load of cargo, ...

The rest of the story. By Jeffrey Dodge In 2017, the Astrolabe published a story I wrote about 19 Californians who went to East Caicos in 1940 with the intention of establishing a utopian colony there. (See: https://www.timespub.tc/2018/01/modern-crusoes/). Since that article was published, I have been contacted by descendants of the group’s leader, Richard Irvine. They’ve shared ...

TCI’s sea, sand, sun and safety entices buyers. By Kathy Borsuk 2020 feels like a year of boxes. We’ve tried to stay in our “home” box as much as possible. We’ve communicated via our “phone” box or our “computer” box while peering at the boxes that hold our family, friends’ and colleagues’ faces. We’re entertained by looking ...

Salt Cay is a remnant of the “Old Caribbean.” By Debbie Manos One side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a corporate nostalgia for the past. The global upheaval and massive changes of 2020 have many yearning for the “good old days.” In the Turks & Caicos Islands, there is a place referred to as “the island ...

SCUBA diving revolutionized ocean exploration for all. By Carmen Hoyt, The School for Field Studies Late one summer night, nearly 51 years ago, half a billion people watched in anticipation as Neil Armstrong was the first human to step onto the moon. An event embodied by the phrase “One small step for a man, one giant leap ...

Shore birds rebound after Hurricane Irma. By Eric F. Salamanca, Elise Elliot-Smith, Caleb Spiegel, Jen Rock, Craig Watson, Bryan N. Manco and Lormeka Williams ~ Photos By Eric F. Salamanca The Piping Plover is a rare shorebird that breeds in the United States and Canada and migrates to the southern US, Caribbean and Mexico for the winter. The International ...

Using satellite telemetry to study the lives of sea turtles. Story & Photos By Dr. Peter Richardson and Amdeep Sanghera, Marine Conservation Society Earlier this year, we finally published the results of 18 years of sea turtle research carried out with our partners at the Turks & Caicos Islands Government’s Department of Environment & Coastal Resources (DECR), ...

For Columbus, the holiday did not bring “glad tidings!” By Bill Keegan, Betsy Carlson and Michael Pateman ‘Twas the night before Christmas Christmas Eve, 1492, sailing with a light wind, the Niña and Santa María exit the Mar de Santo Thomás. At 11:00 PM, standing one league off Punta Santa, there was little wind, the sea was “as ...

2020 hurricane season was the busiest in history. By Paul Wilkerson Back in the Spring 2020 issue of Times of the Islands (what feels like a lifetime ago), warning was given of the potential for an active season. Everything pointed to prime conditions for fairly frequent tropical activity. What I did not anticipate was the busiest tropical ...

A tale of transformation. By Diane Taylor Diane “Dee” Taylor lived and worked for three years on Pine Cay with her husband Gary Hodgkins in the early 1980s. They worked with PRIDE (Protection of Reefs and Islands from Degradation and Exploitation) under the direction of Chuck Hesse. Diane’s job was culturing algae for the feeding of conch ...

Why would anyone copy this old picture postcard? By Jeffrey Dodge ~ Images Courtesy Jeffrey Dodge Why, in the early 1920s, would someone on Grand Turk island want to copy a specific 1906 picture postcard that was out of print and no longer obtainable? Was the picture on this 1906 postcard of special interest to someone? Most ...

Images of the past. By Joanna Ostapkowicz ~ Images By Merald Clark (copyright) In 2017 during a visit to the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, I came across a temporary exhibit filled with children’s paintings focusing on island history, both past and present. At the very start of the exhibition were several paintings showing Columbus laying ...