MoBay Marine Park on Facebook

During the obsessional 'waiting for the container' phase of this blog, I omitted to mention a very entertaining afternoon I spent with Andrew Ross, the director of Montego Bay Marine Park. The park was set up in the early 90s after it had become apparent that the unchecked raiding of coral to make trinkets for tourists and over-fishing of the coastal waters inside the reefs, combined with the impact of hurricane Gilbert, was leading, inexorably, to a major ecological disaster. It was one of the first such parks in the world, and although the indiscriminate destruction of the coral has stopped, many of the issues concerning declining fish stocks and how to develop economically viable eco tourism still remain.
Andrew and I had been emailing for several months and had met briefly a week or so before for the first time: now we settled down on the patio with a couple of Red Stripes to see how I could help with the park’s work, possibly by writing an article in The Daily Telegraph’s Travel section.
Andrew has a refreshingly pragmatic approach to conservation. He points across the bay where, about a mile away, the last uninhabited bit of Bogue Lagoon stretches out to sea. Not for long. Plans are now well advanced for a 700-room hotel complex, part of which will sit next to the only beach in the area where turtles still come to lay their eggs. Does this worry him? No, because he thinks it’s better to embrace tourism and do a deal with the hotel so that they are legally obliged to protect the turtles. ‘I used to think that conservation meant keeping the things the same, but if we leave the turtles alone, what happens is that someone comes along and digs up the eggs. It’s better to have someone responsible for looking after them. And, after all, that’s why people are paying high prices to come to the hotel – so that they can see the turtles.’
Andrew has drawn up an ambitious development plan for the park designed to turn it into a world-class dive centre over the next two years with man-made reefs sunk to provide alternative attractions for tourists while the coral is allowed to recover. At the same time he hopes to enforce restrictions on fishing to build up stocks by a factor of three. There is still the unresolved issue of how incorporate the handful of local fishermen who resist any kind of change into this bright new, eco-friendly future. But one thing he’s certain of is that the marine park needs tourism dollars to achieve its aims.
During the course of our conversation I suggested Andrew set up a MoBay Marine Park page on Facebook as a way of gathering the park’s many friends and supporters worldwide into a viable group for supporting some of the projects he was proposing. Well, bless him, he’s done it: so I urge you to look up MoBay Marine Park on Facebook and sign up to be a fan immediately.