Volunteer helps clean a Little Cayman beach
(CNS Local Life): Little Cayman resorts and businesses recently joined forces with researchers of the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) to take part in an island-wide beach clean-up. During the full winter moon, with researchers gathered for the Grouper Moon Project, a study of the annual spawning of the Nassau grouper, the marine conservation effort expanded to include land as volunteers hit the beaches.
The REEF team, led by Christy Semmens, project coordinator and lead scientist, took time out of their usual work and research schedule for the project to help coordinate the beach cleanup, said a press release. This is the 15th consecutive year the REEF team has been on Little Cayman for grouper research.
Teams from the Southern Cross Club, the Little Cayman Beach Resort, the Grouper Moon Project and the Central Caribbean Marine Institute, along with resort guests and island residents, more than 30 people in all, assisted in cleaning up the more remote beaches around Little Cayman’s pristine shore line.
Debris ends up in the ocean from several sources, including accidental loss and deliberate dumping, as well as storms. The group collected more than 100 bags of debris, mostly plastic, that had washed onshore.
This is great, but perhaps private landowners should have a more profound duty to maintain their property and clean their abutting waterfront. The most egregious recent example involves 175 volunteers that spent their Sunday morning hand-picking 2500 lbs of trash at Dragon Bay (formerly the SafeHaven Development), a large, formerly lease-held parcel, now owned outright by a DART proxy company, Dragon Bay Freehold Ltd. Not only does DART have employees and unusual capability to maintain these areas, but they let local volunteers believe for months that they were cleaning a littered public parkland, while leaving their heavy equipment designed for this purpose parked across the street at their North Sound golf course. Without any visible objection or clarification, they ran a volunteer story in the Compass using the development name from 2005. We should note that DART, via proxy, also owns an expanding dossier of lands abutting waterfront, including in Little Cayman and Barkers. Should public do-gooders be expected to shepherd the neglected lands of private land owners, including, perhaps “the island” at Camana Bay? What is the difference?