Peter Espeut Peter Espeut
I SPENT last week in the Dominican Republic helping out with finalizing arrangements for a meeting of (120+) marine scientists to be held there in six months time (the meeting was held here in 1996). It is good sometimes to check out the competition. The selected location was Punta Cana on the eastern tip of the island, and I wondered why I couldn't find anything about it in the travel literature until I got there and saw that it was a fairly recent development.
A New York lawyer bought 34 square miles of land there for US$150,000 in the 1940s and, now about 90 years old, he presides over real estate worth several gold mines. Besides owning the resort hotel and the golf course, he owns the international airport, the electricity company, the water works, and a lot more besides. There is a gated community of luxury villas for senior management, and a list of private owners including Jose Feliciano, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Oscar de la Renta. For middle management there is also a company town of Mona Heights-type homes complete with church and school. And then for the other workers there is a shanty town.
IMMIGRATION
Cana is the name of a sort of thatch which is the motif of the real estate developments. We flew from Miami direct into the charming Punta Cana International Airport, adorned with acres of cathedral-high vaulted thatched roofs, and were whisked through cursory immigration and customs by our handlers, without having to join a line. Immigration consisted of handing over US$10 for a 'Tourist Card', which we did not have to fill out until our departure, while the Customs Declaration Form we filled out on the plane was never asked for. I suppose there are advantages when you own the airport. The Punta Cana Resort is a three-star complex of thatch-roofed restaurants, bars, villas, water-sports facilities and three-storied blocks of rooms. It is not all-inclusive. The daily rate (of US$80 for the suite I was put in) includes breakfast and dinner (but not lunch), only breakfast beverages (you pay for all other drinks), and use of the gym and all non-motorized water sports (you pay for SCUBA diving but not for snorkelling from the shore).
They may beat us on price but not on service. The group of world-famous environmental scientists who will meet in November is very particular about the environmental friendliness of the places they stay and the menu offered. I was there representing the scientists to check out the situation with the local fisheries and coral reefs. The report from the resort was that both the fisheries and the reefs are under stress and in decline primarily due to the activities of the fishers. They had persuaded the government to create a marine sanctuary in front of their property (stretching from the airport, past the luxury villas, the golf course and beyond the hotel) but the DomRep Navy, they said, were not enforcing it and the problem continued. Was there something we could do, they asked, to encourage the compliance of the fishers in staying out of the marine sanctuary? Stress and decline there certainly is! The reefs I saw on my three dives at the resort were in very bad shape, with less than 2 per cent live corals. Algal overgrowth was everywhere, and there were very few parrot fish and other algae-eating animals, such as sea urchins.
A PLACE LIKE HOME
Perverse delight grew in my heart as (finally) I had found somewhere in the Caribbean worse than Jamaica. The small fishing village, previously on the hotel site, had been relocated and rebuilt a few miles inland by the resort company. With great difficulty (getting transportation to go outside the hotel is not easy) we visited this new settlement and held an impromptu meeting with the mayor and local fishers. I felt right at home there, among small-scale fishers whose approach was similar to the fishers of Rocky Point in Clarendon and Old Harbour Bay in St. Catherine with whom I have the honour to work.
I had great difficulty giving the fishers much of the blame for the damage I saw on the reefs at Punta Cana. Even the hotel says there are only about twenty fishers operating in the area, and we met with most of them. Only seven do spearfishing; the others do deep long-lining outside the reef, using bait they catch inshore with cast nets on a sandy bottom. During my stay I saw only one fishing boat at sea, and it was passing quite quickly in front of the hotel. Such a small number of fishers cannot cause the damage I saw. A more obvious source of reef degradation is the Punta Cana golf course, built right on the beach, which uses tons of fertilizer. Water quality data we were shown quite clearly indicates the nature of the problem. The nitrogen and phosphorus from the fertilizer has washed into the sea causing the algae to grow quickly, killing and overgrowing the reef. The golf department of the resort is the worst enemy of its own diving and snorkelling department.
THROWING THE BLAME
But it is easier, I suppose, to blame the fishers. The fishers themselves were quite willing to abandon spearfishing, as long as alternative employment can be found for them; the hotel can easily incorporate them into their staff complement. Having seen the actual nets being used, the hotel will not harass the fishers as they catch their bait. The hotel has agreed to explore purchasing fish from the local fishers. But no reaction so far to the discovery of the impact the golf course is having on the reef. More water quality data is needed. But the Punta Cana resort is building two more golf courses, and their next door neighbours (Cap Cana) will build five new golf courses in five years. The future for fishing and dive tourism in Punta Cana is bleak! We are not far behind.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and Executive Director of an environment and development NGO.
