Times of the Islands Winter 2023/24

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green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources Today, only the highest sweeps of the Turks & Caicos Islands remain above water. The carbonate islands have seen this languorous drama unfold many times before. Glaciers grew, and sea levels dropped far below today’s low-tide line. The steep-walled, flat-topped islands rose proudly 400 feet above their historic shores. Rainstorms raked the forested heights, leaching the carbonate soils as their waters percolated down, dissolving channels that would become vertical caves. As the rainwaters filtered through ages of former dune sediments, they pooled and floated on the denser marine stuff that forms the islands’ water table. Here the interface between fresh and salt waters digested lateral caves, creating an underground labyrinth. As glaciers continued to hoard their snowfalls, sea levels dropped further and the abandoned, dripping chambers grew draperies of flowstone, stalagmites, and stalactites. Occasionally, a cavern grew so vast that it collapsed inward, creating a sinkhole. When the glaciers melted once again, lifting the oceans, they flooded these caverns and gradually filled the sinkholes and deeper depressions across the landscape—creating ponds and blue holes. The ponds that populate the Turks & Caicos Islands exist along a spectrum of connectivity with the sea. Some ponds have no direct connection to the sea. In such ponds, evaporation exceeds rainfall and they become “hypersaline.” Though impoverished in the more familiar marine life, hypersaline ponds provided refuge for strange, pre-cambrian microbial reefs called stromatolites and occasional blooms of “sea monkeys,” or brine shrimp. The Islands’ flamingos and spoonbills value these occasional buffets, acquiring a richer pink pigment as a result. Left: This pinkish salt flat forms the shores of one of Middle Caicos’ hypersaline ponds, Farm Creek Salina. Right: A pristine, cavern-fed shallow pond lies deep in the interior of Middle Caicos. The Islands also boast ponds that are richly connected to the distant ocean through submarine caves. These caves can be so substantial that their so-called “anchialine ponds” rise and fall with the ocean’s tides, even though the coast may be a mile away. This can create substantial, even alarming, currents at the cave’s entrance. Tidal ponds also have enough turnover that their waters remain clean and fully marine. Rainfall may soften the salinity a bit, favoring the growth of marine life even more. Left and center: Erosion of karst along the shores of St. Thomas Hill Pond in North Caicos led to its attendant anchialine cavern. Right: Terrestrial Indian Cave in Middle Caicos displays its dissolution holes and roof collapse. 28 www.timespub.tc
green pages newsletter of the department of environment & coastal resources This diagram depicts four scenarios involving anchialine (cave-fed, near the sea) marine ponds. Top left: A layer of fresh water (turquoise) overlayers a deep, often anaerobic sea water bed (dark blue). The cavern causes this “blue hole” to be tidal, rising and falling with the ocean. There can be little marine life as the upper layers are fresh and the deeper marine waters have little or no oxygen. Top right: The cavern has been choked off (or never established), causing the pond to become hypersaline (saltier than the sea). Again, little marine life is found. Bottom left: With modest connectivity, a pond may be colonized by fortuitous inhabitants (cave shrimp, jellyfish, sponges), often without larger predators. These can be some of the richest habitats. Bottom right: Larger caverns can allow in predators and grazers that suppress the population explosions seen in some of the less-connected ponds. Anchialine (“near the sea”) caverns help their connected ponds maintain a constant marine environment, serving as an umbilicus to the Mother ocean. Twice-daily seawater exchanges through the unseen caverns prevent over-salination by evaporation during dry spells, and counter the effects of storm and hurricane-delivered rainwaters. One can almost imagine them “breathing.” Such ponds represent perfectly maintained miniature seas. The same subterranean caverns that balance and protect their ponds from change, also serve as wildlife corridors for colonization. Ponds with substantial cave connections can support incredibly rich marine communities with living sponges, jellyfish, macro-algae, annelids and mollusks. Some even provide harbor for pupfish, needlefish, mojarra, and the occasional barracuda, sea turtles, or juvenile Atlantic tarpon that somehow found Times of the Islands Winter 2023/24 29
Page 1 and 2: TIMES OF THE SAMPLING THE SOUL OF T
Page 3 and 4: Building Your Vision, Delivering Ex
Page 5 and 6: Crafted for the fl ow of life. Form
Page 7: Arc By Piero Lissoni Elevated Beach
Page 11: Everything’s Included For Everyon
Page 17: The Leading Private Bank in the Tur
Page 20 and 21: TIMES OF THE ISLANDS MANAGING EDITO
Page 22 and 23: The Cuban crows outside Diane Taylo
Page 25 and 26: around the islands MARTA MORTON—W
Page 27: green pages Newsletter of the Depar
Page 31 and 32: green pages newsletter of the depar
Page 42 and 43: JAMES ROY—PARADISE PHOTOGRAPHY fe
Page 44 and 45: Today, 300 years later, the challen
Page 46 and 47: The seventh stage, if it happens, i
Page 48 and 49: At the same conference, keynote spe
Page 50 and 51: of June. (Disclosure: The author is
Page 52 and 53: population to benefit. A case in po
Page 54 and 55: ISLAND ADVENTURE
Page 56 and 57: Kayak through nature’s nursery Th
Page 58 and 59: Restaurant or Omar’s Beach Hut. E
Page 60: TURK’S HEAD BREWERY Top: You can
Page 63 and 64: new development Opposite page: The
Page 65 and 66: UNDERSTATED LUXURY AT THE WATER’S
Page 67 and 68: Of special significance is The Lore
Page 69 and 70: Indian Cave, Middle Caicos Original
Page 71 and 72: feature Opposite page: The TCI Arts
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Page 75 and 76: Food for Thought provides free dail
Page 77 and 78: astrolabe newsletter of the Turks &
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about the Islands Map provided cour
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WE ARE LEADING THE WAY TO A CLEANER
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Times of the Islands Winter 2023/24

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