department of environment and maritime affairs

The island experienced a boating accident a few months back and many resorts started to request to have swim buoys installed in front of their resorts and fix, if needed, their boat lane markers. For those not from the TCI, as part of the deficit containment initiative, the government earlier in the year had slashed many workers from various agencies, one being the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) which was eventually merged with the Department of Environment and Maritime Affairs. Under DEMA, there exist a shortage of resources both in man power and equipment. At the Grace Bay Club where I work, we recognized this issue and decided to purchase our own buoys and boat lane markers with the help of Vikram, our project manager, to help DEMA but more importantly to help protect our guests and local residents who come to the public beach in front of our resort.

With the help of Provo’s Zero Tolerance Committee under Mike Bookalam, Caribbean Security Services (Mr. Simmons of CSS), Beaches Resort (for the tanks and dive gears), and of course DEMA (Paul Dickenson), we started the project. Evan,our beach supervisor, and I volunteered to help as the job requires at least 5 individuals as you will see from the video. 3 in the water and 2 on the surface including the boat captain. it’s tedious and time consuming work….

Drilling in front of Grace Bay Beach is not so easy as there is a rock plate underneath and sometimes will not go all the way in. It was a hit and miss case many times as we were looking around for what we think is soft sand to drill. My responsibility was to maintain the buoyancy of the lift bag as it holds the machine afloat and release the air as needed to apply downward pressure as we are drilling. Of course, I had to make sure the machine does it drop on Paul!

While doing this, in between breaks, I was able to dive around and saw some nice and big starfish… Paul and I also saw something that we will most likely never see again any time soon…while we were drilling, we saw a big crab run towards the pin and suddenly grab something from underneath the sand. We both followed it and realized that it was a mother crab taking its young away from the drilling to safety. We stopped drilling and I followed her to video her with her baby. Enjoy it!