Late afternoon Charlie, Dan and Sequoia took the small boat over to Rendezvous Caye to take pictures of the multimillion dollar terra-forming project that is completely transforming the island from a natural mangrove and palm atoll to a sterile sea walled luxury subdivision with a helicopter pad, man made beach, marina and $2 million condos.

All of the mangroves have been removed and are being replaced with an illegal cement seawall filled in with sand mined from the sea floor, then planted with coconut palms from a nursery. It is a huge project and will create an almost completely man made island just a few miles away.

Southwest corner of the seawall on Rendezvous Caye

The sad part is that Rendezvous Caye is inside the borders of the South Water Caye Marine Reserve, but enough money can get a developer around any rules in this part of the world. That same developer wants to buy Tarpon Caye and do something similar. We would like to help prevent that from happening. If you might also, please let us know. The owners of Tarpon Caye would like to see it go into a permanent conservation easement as a “No Take” zone and never be developed.

Just north of Rendezvous we visited Long Caye which is owned by the Sittee River Wildlife Reserve. Except for a couple of small caretaker houses, it is being kept in an almost natural state with good healthy mangroves around the perimeter. It is a high, dry island with a good lee side for sailboat anchorage.  A good example (for now) of how to preserve a natural ecosystem.

And finally we stopped at Round Caye to view all of the nesting Ospreys, Pelicans, Frigates and Falcons on a beautiful unspoiled island that has recently been sold into private ownership. No one knows what the owner’s plans are, but we hope that if he develops it he will do so responsibly.

Then back to Tarpon Caye for a delicious dinner of fresh conch steaks and conch fritters (sustainably produced in the Tarpon Caye “Conch Farm”) after a spectacularly beautiful blue sky day of sunshine and perfect temperatures with enough wind to keep the bugs and heat away. Who can ask for more than that? Well you can ask, but we were satisfied with the day so we didn’t need to.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 4:31 AM and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.