Walker's Cay

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Tiger shark

Walker's Cay is an uninhabited island in the north of the Abaco Islands . The small sand island is part of the Walker's Cay reserve , which is around 15 km² in size. This could be put under protection jointly by the population of the Abaco Islands and environmental activists of the US Shark Foundation .

history

Walker's Cay is named after the judge Thomas Walker. Walker had been appointed by the British Vice Admiralty as a judge in the Bahamas around 1700 , where he was fighting piracy . When the pirates began setting up their own cannons at the fort in 1716, Walker fled New Providence to Charles Town , South Carolina . In 1717 he returned to the Bahamas and settled with other settlers on a cay in the north of the Abaco Islands . Walker returned to New Providence shortly before his death in 1722. Whether the island he populated was actually Walker's Cay is not entirely certain. In any case, the island remained uninhabited for over 200 years after Walker's death.

In 1935 an American businessman leased it for 99 years and built a small hotel. Robert Abplanalp bought the leasing rights in 1968 and built a marina and an airfield on the island to make it an attractive destination for anglers . In 2002, almost 24 km² of the sea north of the island was declared Walker's Cay National Park . In 2004, the two hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit the island, which destroyed the hotel and badly damaged the marina. In 2018 the island was sold to a Texan businessman who wants to build a tourist infrastructure there again.

tourism

The marine reserve has an extremely diverse marine fauna. The corals and fish are a great attraction for tourists. The many sharks are particularly worth mentioning here . A caught shark makes about $ 10 in the market today. Since only its fins are cut off and used, this bears no relation to its tourist market value. The value of a living shark in the waters of the Bahamas is estimated to be around $ 15,000 a year. Because the Bahamas and its diverse underwater world attract around 3.2 million bathers and divers from all over the world every year. The islands are considered to be one of the best hair parks in the world. The Bahamas government estimates that around 40% of all recreational divers come to the islands just because of the sharks.

Danger

Foreign fishermen in particular still catch sharks today. Walker's Cay lost almost half of the 100 or so sharks that were regularly seen there. About 40 sharks were caught and killed in one night. Animal rights activists found them with their fins cut off.

The so-called Hai Rodeo is a special spectacle. Here divers can watch the shark feeding. The sharks are fed frozen fish. As soon as the feeding is over, the divers are free to pick up the lost shark teeth as souvenirs , which the animals lost to their frozen prey. Shark feeding is considered very dangerous because the animals fall into a feeding frenzy and snap at anything that moves. In addition, the sharks get used to the feeding spot and are easy prey for illegal fishermen.

The coral bleaching has not spared the reefs of the Bahamas. It was observed here thirty years ago and occurred locally.

literature

  • TF Goreau, NI Goreau, TJ Goreau : corals and coral reefs. In: Biology of the Seas. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin / New York 1991, ISBN 3-89330-753-2 .
  • Erich Ritter , Gerhard Wegner: Shark accidents: Understanding the background - recognizing dangers . Kosmos-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-440-10171-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Sandra Riley: Homeward Bound: A History of the Bahama Islands to 1850 with a Definitive Study of Abaco in the American Loyalist Plantation Period. 4th edition, Riley Hall, Miami 2000, ISBN 0-9665310-2-7 , pp. 51-57 ( limited preview in the Google book search, English).
  2. ↑ Jim Bartlinski: A Brief Account of Sarah Walker Fairfax, the Mother of Sarah Fairfax Carlyle. In: Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (Ed.): Carlyle House Docent Dispatch . June 2009, accessed on September 14, 2019 (PDF; 1.14 MB; English).
  3. ^ History - Walker's Cay. In: walkerscay.com . Retrieved September 14, 2019.
  4. ↑ Walker's Cay National Park. Bahamas National Trust. Retrieved September 14, 2019.
  5. ↑ How much is a shark worth? ( Memento from February 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Environment.cms4people.de .
  6. ↑ Underwater parks: economic and ecological aspects. In: sharkinfo.ch . June 15, 1999, accessed September 13, 2019.
  7. ↑ Klaus Jost: Pictures of the Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi) at the “Shark rodeo”… In: jostimages.de . Retrieved September 13, 2019.
  8. ↑ Walkers Cay, Abaco, Bahamas. ( Memento of February 26, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) In: his.com .
  9. ↑ Worldwide coral death due to coral bleaching! Is it because of the El Niño phenomenon? In: elnino.info . Retrieved September 13, 2019.

Coordinates: 27 ° 15 ′ 39 ″  N , 78 ° 24 ′ 9 ″  W.