A few months ago I wrote an article for What’s Hot about the pros and cons of artificial reefs anticipating the deployment and sinking of the USS Kittiwake here in Grand Cayman. Due to a number of factors the sinking was delayed until 5 January , 2011.
It was a beautiful winter day with a light north easterly wind, providing for calm conditions in the protection of West Bay. Accompanied by Jessica and Alexander, my kids who are both keen divers, we anchored outside the perimeter marked off by the Dept of Environment and the Marine Police. Regular updates on the VHF radio gave us an idea of the history of the ship and the projected sinking schedule. The details of the ship’s construction and service can be found on a number of dedicated websites.
Pumping sea water into the hold began around 10.30am. At approximately 2.25pm she started sinking rapidly, stern going down and listing sharply to port, I bet a number of people were holding their breaths as it seemed she would topple over in spite of all the preparations, and then appeared to sink upright as air rushed from the port holes and open hatches. I was looking at her from the bow, and it was actually quite a sad moment as the two anchor ports went under like the eyes of a drowning person…
This ship, with lovely lines, was stripped of most of her masts, and derricks, and was thoroughly cleaned of all fuel, pollutants and was made diver safe. She is perhaps the cleanest ship ever used as an artificial reef.
She was deployed in only 60 feet of water on a sand bottom close to patch reefs and the roll off into deep water. She will give years of service now as an incredible attraction for divers and snorkelers in the pristine waters off 7 Mile Beach, and provide a needed boost to the economy of the Cayman Islands.
I am a great supporter of artificial reefs, even in a coral reef environment such as ours. Socio economic studies of artificial reefs in Florida demonstrate hundreds of thousands of dollars generated by individual artificial reefs from diving and sport fishing activity each year. Not that there will be any fishing allowed at this site, but it will be interesting to document the recruitment of fish and sessile organisms, firstly algae, then soft and hard corals as they settle on the steel structure over the next two decades. In time the interior will attract baitfish such as silversides and copper sweepers, and the accompanying predators will shortly follow. The life span of such a reef is unpredictable and the rate of disintegration is governed largely by storm surge.
Since the Oro Verde was sunk it has been torn apart by a succession of storms in the last decade. As it took about eight years for this project to be executed, perhaps we, the diving community, the Cayman Islands Tourism Association and the Cayman Islands Government should immediately start the search for another suitable ship for an artificial reef to be the successor to the Kittiwake. I will put my money where my mouth is and volunteer my Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation to assist in locating and funding the next ship.
Talking of mouths, another area of great interest to me and the Guy Harvey Research Institute is the tiger shark. We have tagged or sponsored the electronic tagging of 41 tiger sharks in the north western Atlantic in the last two years. Each SPOT tag deployed to the dorsal fin of the shark costs about $2,500 and then another $500 for the satellite time and monitoring. We have tagged tigers 28 in Bermuda, seven in the US Virgin Islands, four in the Bahamas and just recently two in Grand Cayman.
The GHRI and GHOF collaborated with a number of research organisations in each of these island territories, which is why the project has been so successful. Tiger sharks, we are now discovering, make seasonal migrations spending much of the warm summer months cruising in the open ocean often in very deep water looking for migrating turtles and feeding opportunistically on dead floating animals such as dolphin, whales, fish and sea birds. In the winter they move into the reef environment around oceanic islands in the Caribbean and Bahamas, and will come into very shallow water targeting rays, fish and lobsters.
The Overseas Territories Environmental Programme, with assistance from the DoE, has sponsored a shark population analysis study in the Cayman Islands. Being particularly interested in tiger sharks here, the GHOF sponsored SPOTs when the team caught and tagged two tigers in early December 2010. Both were caught at night in North Sound and successfully released bearing an internal sonic tag and external SPOT attached to the dorsal fin. Each time the animal swims at the surface, the tag sends a signal to a satellite giving its position very accurately. The team was also able to tag Caribbean reef sharks, black tip sharks and nurse sharks all caught at night in North Sound. An array of listening stations deployed by REEF (initially for grouper studies) around all three islands detects the passing of the species tagged with sonic transducers.
We have learned through years of diving with tiger sharks in well regulated, licensed shark interactive adventures in the Bahamas that tiger sharks are not the mindless killers as portrayed in the press or in sensationalistic TV shows on Shark Week. Divers, and photographers have been safely interacting with tiger sharks for decades and watched horrified as their numbers and those of other pelagic, migratory sharks have been annihilated for the last three decades in the shark fin trade that threatens too clear all sharks from the planet.
If you are lucky enough to see one of the tiger sharks we have tagged, please send me or the DoE a photo of the animal. If you happen to catch one while out fishing, then please release the animal alive (as you should release all sharks alive) responsibly. In time all shark species around Cayman will receive the protection they surely need under the new Conservation Law.
Fish responsibly, dive safely.
Guy Harvey PhD.