A film explores Curaçao’s effort to become a Caribbean haven for cCoral

By Andrew C. Revkin From New York Times

After months of reporting and planning, a frenetic week of filming in March, and many long nights in the editing suite, 10 Pace University communication students, with guidance from Prof. Maria Luskay and me, have completed “Curaçao’s Coral Challenge – Reviving the Rain Forests of the Sea.”

The film had its premiere last night [May 12] at the Jacob Burns Film Center, in Pleasantville, N.Y., and will be soon be broadcast on TeleCuracao.

The 25-minute documentary outlines how this Caribbean island nation, tucked a few dozen miles from the South American coast and long a refining hub for Venezuelan oil, is struggling to expand tourism but do so without degrading a prime asset drawing visitors — its coral reefs.

In the film, marine biologists from the 60-year-old Carmabi Research Institute, Secore Foundation and Waitt Institute explain why the island’s geography and other factors have fortuitously preserved remarkably vibrant reefs in some spots despite decades of pollution, cruise ship traffic and coastal construction.

“I think that Curaçao has been really lucky so far,” we were told by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist who did her doctoral research on fishing practices around coral reefs on the island and now runs the Waitt Institute, a conservation group helping Caribbean islands develop “Blue Halo” marine zoning plans designed to allow communities to “use the ocean without using it up.”

In the film, Johnson says that shielding the most important reefs from fishing and runoff is a critical step or the island’s luck will run out:

Curaçao has some of the healthiest reefs in the Caribbean, and that is not because of marine reserves, that’s not because of strong pollution controls, it’s not because coastal development hasn’t happened,” Johnson says in the film. “It is because of great currents that flush pollution out, it’s because the north shore hasn’t been developed just because it’s not the type of typography that lends itself to that, so figuring out how to transition from luck to deliberately protecting the reefs is the [challenge] right now.”

The first Blue Halo initiative was launched in Barbuda in 2012 and recently produced pioneering ocean zoning legislation there. Curaçao, along with Montserrat, signed agreements with the institute in February.

The initiative, Johnson explains, is a tool kit that “includes things like habitat mapping, ecological assessment, policy development, education, communication, enforcement training.”

The Waitt Institute came to Curaçao because it is much larger than Barbuda and has already demonstrated an interest in conservation through existing laws governing fishing.

“We didn’t want to just work on small islands,” she says in the film. “And Curaçao was our big leap to see how we can help a place like this that is a lot more complicated but also has a lot more local capacity.”

Generating public support for such environmental steps can be difficult in the face of conflicting priorities and unrelated political problems. Curcacao, largely independent of the Netherlands since 2010, has experienced political growing pains in recent years.

We interviewed tourism officials who expressed caution about clamping down too much on development, given the lack of growth in other economic sectors, and fisherman concerned that no-fishing zones could end fishing altogether — saying local fisherman aren’t the main problem and are already facing high fuel costs and competition from cheaper seafood imports.

But we found a general sense of optimism that a reasonable balance can be struck.

Among the film’s other interview subjects are Glenn Sulvaran, a member of Curaçao’s parliament with a passion for reef conservation; Faisal Dilrosun, a government health and environment advisor; and Carmabi Institute science director Mark Vermeij.

The film grew out of reporting I did last year on encouraging report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and other groups laying out ways to sustain Caribbean coral reefs even in the face of rising temperatures and other impacts of human-driven global warming. One vital step is protecting parrotfish and other algae-munching herbivores.

Reef Protection Starts on Land

But one theme that emerged in the reporting is that a reef revival cannot succeed unless it includes managing activities on land — the main source of nutrient-rich pollution. The film describes how excessive nutrients from sewage or agriculture can tip the balance in the perpetual “turf war” between corals and algae that I first learned about from John Bruno at the University of North Carolina.

With that issue in mind, Vermeij and the Carmabi Institute have been involved for years in delicate discussions related to the fate of a critical ecological and economic asset — a 17-square-mile tract of scrub, forest and grasslands called East Point (Oostpunt in Dutch) that constitutes 10 percent of Curaçao’s land area.

East Point has been owned since the 1870s by the Maal family. The family and the Curaçao government have been in court since the 1980s, tussling over how much of the land can be developed.

The family’s views are best reflected in a speech given at a 2013 meeting of the Curaçao Trade and Business Association by Willem Pieter “Willy” Maal (published in 2013 in the Curaçao Chronicle).

In the speech, Maal – who is credited by many environmentalists with trying hard to prevent illegal fishing and other harmful activities — said the endless delays have harmed the environment and economy:

You cannot preserve a Rolls Royce by putting it in a shed on the coast, and not touch it, maintain it, or protect it!

Nature, left to its own recourse, will also ruin itself. Even worse, man, as part of that “nature” will destroy it even faster…. The natural richness and potential of Oostpunt since 1993 is under huge stress due to natural deterioration, and rampant illegal practices such as spear fishing, plundering of baby conch, lobsters and the capture of sea turtles and rays, poaching of goats/sheep and donkeys, while a variety of other criminal activities savagely take place in the area, like car theft and stripping, the smuggling of drugs and people, trash dumping, etc.

This destruction can only be stopped by durable and well-balanced responsible development of Oostpunt. This requires the re-zoning [of] Oostpunt according to logical, objective, professional on-site evaluations….

After all, the Maal family are not developers. We are owners who want logical, objective sustainable guidelines that the future developers will have to adhere to. The fact is that the Maal family for centuries maintained and preserved this area, and never allowed piecemeal or bit-parcelization or undesirable projects.

Conservation groups, including Carmabi, have been pressing to limit the construction footprint to avoid runoff and other harmful impacts on the fringing reefs – which are among the richest in the Caribbean and serve as a nursery for reefs along the coast as coral and fish larvae drift in currents. The film contains spectacular footage of those reefs shot by Carmabi divers.

The Carmabi Foundation has proposed an alternative development plan.

Hopefully, a compromise can be found that allows the Maal family to prosper while the coastal reef resource is preserved.

Learning by Doing

I have loved co-teaching this spring travel course, in which a mix of graduate and undergraduate students learn on two fronts. They tackle complex subjects — like balancing environmental and economic concerns — even as they seek to master the extraordinary but complicated hardware and software that have leveled the playing field of filmmaking so that students need not wait to be out in the “real” world to convey important stories.

Actually, students can still be in high school and contribute. Such is the case with Kayla Pacenka, the sister of Cassie Pacenka, the documentary’s lead editor and assistant director.

Kayla spent many hours, even while studying for finals, refining her After Effects skills and creating the film’s animations and titles, which help explain reef economics and ecology.

You can track the production’s high points and headaches on the students’ Lights, Camera, Coral blog and in Cassie Pacenka’s vlog.

The course, created by Prof. Luskay some 15 years ago, has made films about efforts to conserve natural resources since I joined her in 2011. Previous films in our environmental series have examined Brazil’s efforts to limit social and environmental impacts from the World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics; sea turtle conservation in Mexico’s Baja region; the sustainably managed cork forests of Portugal; and low-impact shrimp farming in Belize.

I hope you’ll watch the film, weigh in on its conclusions and share it with friends or colleagues who care about ocean conservation.

IMAGES:
Coral reefs off Curaçao’s eastern end – called East Point or Oostpunt – are among the richest in the Caribbean. Credit Carmabi Foundation
Conservationists in Curaçao are trying to prevent coastal development, like this near a bay called Spanish Water, in areas with rich reefs. Credit Andrew C. Revkin
Zoning for the Seas
A map of protected marine zones that are being established around the Caribbean island of Barbuda. Credit Waitt Institute
The outermost tip of East Point, or Oostpunt, an undeveloped tract in Curaçao ringed by rich reefs. The longtime landowner is negotiating with the government over its fate. Credit NASA
A proposed plan for developing and conserving parts of East Point, or Oostpunt, a tract on Curaçao that is fringed by some of the richest reefs in the Caribbean. Credit Carmabi Foundation
Prof. Maria Luskay of Pace University (standing) and her student documentary team. Credit Andrew C. Revkin
Credit Kayla Pacenka

For more on this story go to: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/a-film-explores-curaaos-effort-to-become-a-caribbean-haven-for-coral/?_r=0