Dominica: The Nature Island (2023) | Pristine Seas | National Geographic Society

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh, the first people who inhabited this island, the Can people, clearly lived in tandem with [Music] nature. I grew up in my entire life in the Carago space. I was part of a unique family; my dad, my uncle, two cousins, before we all Kago. [Music] Chief, the Carago nation was built around the ocean, built around the sea, built around the [Music] water. The sea was one of the primary areas for resource, for food, for travel, and for resistance against invasions. And so the sea became part of us.

[Music] In Dominica, the food, the beverage, the architecture all lean heavily on the use of nature. And not only the use of nature, but the sustained use of nature, and all of it was aimed at ensuring that we [Music] survived.

[Music] Everything that we know as Dominicans—what we eat, how we breathe, how we sleep, how we dance, how we sing—it's all being influenced by the environment around us. There's a very motherly role that exists in the island; how she takes care of us, how she raises us, how she feeds us, provides for us. She has a life of her own. Hurricane Maria hit the island of Dominica as a Category 5. It's the first time in recorded history a hurricane that strong makes landfall on the island.

I will never forget the exact moment that Hurricane Maria hit the West Coast. In 2015, we had tropical storm Erica, and in 2017, hurricane [Music] Maria. The wind was howling so loud, and you couldn't really see anything outside. And then, just like that, the roof just started to go.

The key lesson that we've learned from the impacts of these natural disasters, Erica and Maria, is that in a few hours, your entire economy can be wiped away. The country was very decimated. How do you figure out who's alive? Because you emerge to this like nothingness. How are people supposed to survive this? The government realized, uh, that we needed to do something [Music] drastic, that we had to build greater resilience in Dominica; otherwise, we would continue to be stuck in this "Build, Destroy, Rebuild" cycle.

For us, the issue of climate resilience is actually an existential issue. It's a matter of survival. We will not be able to survive, um, if we do not build resiliency within every aspect, within every sector of this country. We have one guiding mission: to become the world's first climate-resilient nation.

By [Music] 2013, we were invited by the government of Dominica to assess the health of the marine environment, because the only way a country can be resilient to the impacts of climate change is by ensuring that their environment is healthy, and nature can help the country come back. And this is where we come in with our [Music] research, working with local partners to understand what's the status, what's the condition of the coral reefs, the deep sea, and the offshore waters of Dominica.

Pro is a program that started in 2009 by Dr. Enrique Sala of National Geographic to help explore and protect the last wild places in the ocean. And we do that through a combination of science, exploration, media, and policy. By going to some of the most amazing untouched places in the ocean and helping them get protected.

We'll begin the expedition in the southeast and then head north along the coast toward Kabitz National Park, surveying the waters as we go. If we are lucky, a weather window should allow us to access sites on the rougher Atlantic side of the island, including Makuba Bank, a seamount 20 km off the coast of the [Music].

We in the ministry are very excited about this expedition and the findings that we are hoping you'll be able to capture through the time that you spend in our waters. We have not captured some of this data to the extent that would allow us to make decisions by 20130 to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. It's a pleasure to meet you.

There's no substitute for local knowledge. These people who are in the water every day understand this ecosystem; they understand the rhythms and cycles. By combining and collaborating with local researchers, local fishermen, and local people who understand the ecosystem, we can bring some of our assets, and then collectively we'll just do a better job of understanding the ecosystem and therefore doing a better job of being able to manage it in the future.

We're here in the southern part of Dominica, by the village of Sura, and we're in the Scots Head Marine Reserve. What we really like to see is how the marine protected areas are doing relative to other areas that are open to fishing, that have other types of impacts associated with them.

A marine protected area is a place where human activities are reduced, so marine life can come back. The healthier the marine environment, the more resilient it is to the impacts of climate change and other human activities. And the best way to restore the health of a marine environment is through fully protected areas where damaging activities are banned. And these are the areas that allow the fullest recovery of marine life.

But they also have other benefits. These reserves are so full of fish that many of them spill over; they reproduce much more and help to replenish the fishing grounds nearby. Also, when the fish come back, the divers come in, and we've seen from many places around the world that diving tourism, ecotourism, increases after protection, supporting jobs and bringing in much more economic revenue to countries.

So that's kind of the three remote camera systems, and then so the dive team. So you're going to be going out with the dive team, and that'll be K, Eric, myself, and Jen. It's not been a lot of work done outside of the few protected areas that Carrie and other people have worked on, so we're really relying on people like Carrie and a lot of the other locals to provide that local knowledge to help us hone in on where we can provide additional information for the government to help protect their marine environment. Right now, that's what we're [Music] tackling.

I have been a warden now for at least 10 years. It's a fun job; it's something that I have never thought I would be involved in, but once I got a taste of it, I've never looked back and only forward, and I love my job. We always have to be monitoring this area. There's a trail that will go up into the bush and will connect to the main road; oftentimes, poachers will just use that and come down to the beach to do their illegal activities. So this is one of our highly monitored areas right here, Point Ginard.

[Music] My job description is actually enforcing the laws of the marine reserve, which entails protecting the marine life, also having a great relationship with the fisher folks, giving information to tourists and locals about our conservation [Music] work. In my 10 years of being a warden, I will say that it has its ups and downs. You have people that are not willing to cooperate with the wardens.

Coaching might often find yourself in a situation where you could have a verbal altercation with a fisherman. It becomes extremely stressful sometimes. But the upside to that is the fact that we're meeting with different people from different parts of the world. You actually exchange culture, exchange information, and you can definitely spread the word about conservation work.

It definitely, you know, raises your spirit and helps you to go out the next day because you know what you're doing is, um, going to be beneficial for you and for future generations. The Caribbean has kind of suffered death by a thousand cuts. All different types of impacts have occurred in the Caribbean—from overfishing to a lot of coastal development, a lot of tourism that has negative impacts, land-based sources of pollution, poor water quality, and things like that.

So we're hoping to be able to see, are there still places in the Caribbean that are healthy, and maybe they can help support the marine ecosystems elsewhere? I am definitely excited because we're going to be diving at Solomon's which is one of the places where we could definitely see lots of fish. It's very diverse; on any given day, you never know what could be passing by in the blue. It just all depends on what Mother Nature throws your way.

[Music] [Music] Dominica is a pretty interesting island; it's very geologically active on land and that kind of extends to the sea. There are a lot of interesting geological features, a lot of seamounts, and so forth, and that makes for a diverse marine ecosystem, anything from the shallow typical Caribbean karst ecosystem to some of the deep sea [Music] habitats.

[Music] [Music] We found a few places that had really nice Elkhorn coral; Acropora palmata used to be the dominant thing on reefs in the Caribbean, and now it's really hard to find them. So to see them is a hopeful sign that maybe they're hanging on and maybe they're even being able to reproduce and at some point, maybe replenish other [Music] areas.

The first dive is always so educational. It was, it's, it's really going to set the tone for the rest of the trip. So really excited now, um, to see the diversity of the fishes on this reef, and it was actually spectacular. It was just a beautiful little reef. The good news is that fish in the reserve are twice more abundant than outside, but most of the fish are quite small, so there is still potential for a fuller recovery of marine life within the reserve.

We spent the last couple of days in the Scots Head Marine Protected Area near the village of Su, and now we're going to head our way north, uh, towards the center portion of the island, staying on the west coast on the Caribbean side, and we'll see how that compares outside the Marine Protected Area to areas that are more heavily fished.

If you look at the geography of Dominica and where many communities are located, you would see that most of them are located well within one mile of the coastline, and the basic reason is that we have always largely depended as a protein source on seafood. You see what happening? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, [Music] as a nation learning from the sea, learning from the water, we have understood the importance of having that resource at our fingertips and not only to use for daily living but to learn from it as a powerful element.

We have to find time to understand it and also to appreciate that it can be managed to our [Music] benefit. Traditionally, fishing has been a very important aspect of Dominica's diet, of Dominica's traditions, of Dominica's livelihoods, of Dominica's employment. I don't do fish about since I was about 15, 50 years; I know I about 54, I feel all my formalities.

Managing the fishes in Dominica is a huge undertaking, but as we know in fish management, we don't manage the fish; we manage the people. We try to work a lot with the people who actually interact with those resources a lot. So we meet with them, we have discussions with them, we train them, and we make them understand the importance of the marine space and the resources within the marine space and how they should act within the marine space so that it can be safe and healthy for everybody, and they themselves can form and maintain and sustain a very lucrative livelihood within that marine space.

We eat what we grow; the same fish that is being protected in the MPA is what you're going to need for proteins. We need to understand that we have to do a better job at how we fish. It needs to be, um, some type of stability in terms of, um, what we actually go out and catch, the size of the fish, the type of [Music] fish. It's not just about conserving what's taking place within those protected areas. If these critical areas are protected, then the whole island is going to benefit from that.

So even though you can't fish in that one particular area, you're going to have more animals that can produce more offspring that can benefit the areas outside of that protected area and be available to [Music] fish.

We're up early because we're going to Makuba Bank today, so we're heading about 20 mi off the coast of Dominica to sample this kind of rise—the same mount that comes up. We know it's an important place for fishing for pelagics, so we're really interested in what might be out there. Makuba Bank is sort of a platform; it's a bank that is about 20 mi off the southeast side of Dominica. It starts up at around 70 m as the shallowest area and then it drops off down to over 1,000 m on the [Music] sides.

Makuba Bank is an excellent opportunity for pristine seas to use our deep-sea cameras. [Music] So we're out here today deploying a range of different cameras. We're deploying Mopic cameras on the seafloor, deep-sea cameras just off the edges of the plateau, and then, uh, pelagic cameras in the blue water above. The deep-sea cameras allow us to explore this habitat, this ecosystem that's very difficult to know about. It'll give us a good idea of what animals are out here, what impacts they might be having in terms of fishing from both Dominicans and from nearby neighboring countries.

So the data we're going to collect out here might help inform Dominica's conservation planning. We've moved away from nearshore fishing in many, many communities, and we have gone into offshore fishing through the use of [Music] FADs. Fish Aggregating Device, or FAD, is important for essentially bringing the fish into one little area that you can actually target them and catch them.

It's important for us here in Dominica because we largely depend on large pelagic fisheries. But with a FAD, now you have a better chance of making a catch because you know that there will be fish there in most cases. The FADs allow them that opportunity to go directly to the fish catch and pinpoint what is available. They catch the fish, and they are able to return on the same day and land the fish for sale. It's not very intrusive, and it causes minimal harm to really the [Music] environment.

This should be a really lush, productive reef platform/seamount, but right now there seems to be a lot of overfishing going on there, and so the bank was not as productive as we would have thought. We spent a solid three days there; Makuba Bank probably could benefit from better management. There's a lot of illegal fishing. If that fishing was, you know, reduced or eliminated, the productivity of the bank would probably increase.

But I have noticed there is one fishy, for example, the Marlin. In the beginning, when we started bringing in the Marlin, they were very huge; they were very, very huge. But today they are either, um, not brought on shore, they're not caught, they're not available, or they're very [Music] small. There's a dual benefit there for both the open water mobile species and also for the resident reef fish. If they get protected out at Makuba Bank, they'd be bigger, they produce more offspring, and potentially spill over to the adjacent nearshore areas that could be harvested by the Dominica fishermen.

We had this amazing opportunity to have these SE fellows come on to our expedition, share their knowledge and what they know about Dominica, and also have them experience what it's like to be on a National Geographic pristine expedition. Product C is a marine educational leadership program that Dominica runs, taking a measurement every second, so go ahead and start dropping it down.

What we do is try to create some sort of ocean literacy program for our fellows. Um, we're trying to make sure that they are youth leaders in the marine ecosystem and become stewards of the ocean. The youth are the future, and the youth need to be fully on board with ensuring that there is protection of the environment, and we have a responsibility as adults as well to take the actions now to ensure their future.

For the Pristine Seas Expedition, I'm quite excited to be a part of their research, their experiments, to be a sponge to absorb information, as well as to be able to use that information and communicate it back to the public. So we just deployed two meso cameras, so fellows at the end of their cohort, they will learn new skills in research vessel skills, seamanship, and sperm whale communication.

The Dominica SP whale program has been doing research for the past 15 years, and so we are using that information to better understand how whales communicate. This is a very rare coral; through this expedition and being a setti fellow, I'm really looking forward to delving even deeper into the science and looking forward to studying the whales and understanding their coders even [Music] more.

Dominica has something unique in its waters—a resident population of about 200 sperm [Music] whales. We consider them to be citizens of Dominica; they're born, live, and grow up in our waters, and that for us is very important. [Music]

I have been diving for 35 years all over the world, from the Arctic to the tropics, and I had never experienced something like swimming with the sperm whales in Dominica. It was totally magical and spiritual. Sperm whales communicate among themselves using clicks, which are very loud. You can feel them in your bones when you're underwater, and this is the way they identify themselves because they live in families—maternal, lineal [Music] families.

This mother whale, like other whales, needs two things: she needs a place where food can be found reliably, and when she has her young, she needs a place that's relatively sheltered and protected, so her babies are safe. Dominica has them both. Throughout the year, the island, this island, is full of um, mountains and valleys, and so that's how it is underwater. So these whales, the ones that are here, are unique to this island because these whales use the shores, the same valleys and mountains and so, to feed.

Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales. They are actually the largest top predator on the planet. To maintain these bodies, these giants dive to 800 or 1,000 m deep for 45 minutes to hunt giant [Music] squid. And in between dives, they come back to the surface and rest. This is how sperm whales sleep; they have the shortest sleep cycle of any mammal on earth, napping for about 15 minutes before descending again for another meal.

We don't know yet why they're sleeping in these formations, but we do know sperm whales are part of the climate resilience machine of Dominica. Along with resting and breathing, when they come back to the surface in between dives, they defecate, and, well, poop is very rich in nutrients that fertilize the shallow waters, which creates blooms of plankton—these microscopic plants that use sunlight to capture carbon dioxide from the water and release oxygen. When this plankton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean to the deep sea with the carbon in it, which then becomes a carbon sink. The more whales in the ocean, the more they will be able to help us mitigate climate change.

So, a sperm whale reserve would be part of Dominica's climate resilience strategy. But the sperm whales of Dominica have been declining steadily over the last 20 years because of a combination of human threats that are not unique to Dominica. They affect sperm whales throughout the planet, like ship strikes, noise, chemical pollution, entanglement with fishing gear, eating [Music] [Applause] [Music] plastic.

Currently, there are no shipping lanes to regulate the traffic of large vessels like cargo ships and cruise ships in Dominica waters, and these vessels crisscross whale territory every single day, which increases the risk of ship strikes. And this is something that affects whales throughout the [Music] world.

We have a passion for these animals; you know, seeing these animals growing up. A lot of times over the years, we see the mothers give birth, so we know these whales personally. We need to try to protect these animals as much as possible so we can have these whales 200 years from now. You know, a sperm whale reserve for Dominica could include regulations that basically are the playbook and best practices for everyone to operate within that works best for the whales. That could be a real pinnacle of Dominica's economy for the long [Music] run.

For the most part, there's a lot of emphasis on the green economy because it's sort of what you see every day, but there's a massive resource in the blue economy in terms of marine life. The development of the blue economy is one facet of what we're looking at in terms of building our resilience.

If we can continue to develop it and ensure that the marine life is properly protected, then it continues to be an area of interest, an area of wonder, I think, for our tourists and also for our locals as well. We know from places around the world that the healthier the marine environment, the more it attracts tourists, and the more people are willing to pay to see that diversity of life in the ocean.

If you can imagine, marine reserves are like fish factories. So starting with that core, you have tourists that want to see the fish inside the reserve. There's a spillover of fish for sustainable rates outside, and then from there you can see the concentric circles of how many secondary and tertiary markets within a country benefit from that.

So, of course, people stay in hotels and eat food, and there are all these other local people that enjoy what the marine reserve provides. When the ocean is replenished, people are willing to pay for very special experiences with amazing creatures. So, for example, the gorillas in Rwanda at Volcanoes National Park, people pay $1,500 for just an hour to hike up and spend a little bit of time with a gorilla family for a day, which turns into a lifelong memory.

So Dominica has an opportunity to really highlight its sperm whales in its country and create a best practice framework with destination tour operators and travelers, and price it [Music] accordingly. Land to sea, mountains to the ocean are all heavily connected in Dominica. So what happens on land can really affect what happens in the ocean.

So we need to think about conservation, not only just in the sea or just in the land; we need to think about conservation in a more holistic way where everything's [Music] connected.

So far, the effects of global warming, climate change, and pollution have already affected Dominica in so many negative ways. We have seen a drastic decline in the corals here, and if they are destroyed or they die off, we are at risk of seeing a lot more of the coastal [Music] damage.

Dominica, like a lot of places, is at a crossroads or a tipping point. [Music] All you have to do is go a little bit over—too much fishing, too much pollution, too much coastal development—and then we don't know what's going to happen with climate change. And once things get out of balance, they can tip very quickly.

We are aware that in terms of the population, the fish population, um, nearshore, it has gone down significantly. It's urgent and incumbent upon us that we make the change necessary to make sure that the species are there long-term.

We're going to the Atlantic side at Scot Set Drop-off, and we're going to treat the P coral. Marine protection only works if there is public support for it. The creation or expansion or modification of any protected area really relies heavily on community support and community input at every step of the way. An important part of our thrust to becoming resilient is also ensuring that there is a collective consciousness of all people, ensuring that we are aware of how our actions impact on others, how our actions impact on the environment, and having a greater sense of the need to protect the environment for our [Music] future.

It does not matter if we have the best natural resources in the world, and we do; if we do not have the people to do the necessary works to take advantage of these resources, then we will not be able to achieve this goal. So people are the most important assets of the country.

And I'll just ask people to reconsider and to weigh their options and make the best decision that would be preferred for the development of our [Music] nation. Dominica has a unique opportunity to set the right type of protections that will restore marine life, improve the fishing catch and the livelihoods of local fishermen, and also bring in much more economic revenue from people who want to come to the nature island to see something that they cannot see anywhere else in the Caribbean.

It is a creature, I believe, that we have a duty and an obligation to protect. And so we'll be declaring very soon Dominica having the first sperm whale sanctuary or reserve, protecting it from the cruise ships coming in, protecting it from the carcasses coming in, protecting them from the fishing, and, and this will receive legislative protection because it's important for us to protect that very special creature and a creature that is so huge but gentle and a very important source of [Music] r for many of our citizens and for our country as a [Music] whole.

Our small island community here, uh, has a lot to offer to humanity in terms of preservation of nature and the environment and building human [Music] capacity. Dominicans are very resilient people; they are a very strong, vibrant, and proud people because we have been used to depending on ourselves.

I think the most important thing that we have is our people. I think that's the greatest asset—the resilience of our people. When a disaster happens or anything happens in Dominica, we get up the next morning, and we start working. We are seeking to create solutions for ourselves. We're saying, "Okay, the hurricanes will come, but we'll prepare for them, and we'll become more resilient."

And so, the destruction that the hurricanes have caused in the past, we will not suffer the same level of destruction in the future. Hurricanes come to the Caribbean from the Eastern Atlantic, and all of these islands in the ANS are in the middle of the hurricane highway, so Dominica is susceptible to being hit by a hurricane every number of years.

We have been able to do quite a lot in Dominica so far. There was infrastructure that we built after Tropical Storm Erica that was able to withstand the might of Hurricane Maria. So we know that it is possible.

[Music] My hope for Dominica is that we will continue to be an island that is known for its respect for the environment, for [Music] sustainability, that Dominica will be the shining light for the rest of the Caribbean, of a country that employs clean and green practices and is able to do well as a [Music] result.

We don't believe that we can save the entire world now, but if each of us were to play our small part in the small space that we have, then it all adds up, and the world can be a much better place for all of us to live in, and for citizens to be able to stay where they are and to become economically [Music] empowered.

I don't even believe we're the nature island of the Caribbean; I believe we're the nature island of the world. It is definitely a breathtaking experience. Everywhere you go, on land, in the water, we have so much to [Music] offer. There are so many places that are still untapped, still undiscovered.

We want to just explore with you, enjoy everything that we have, and the only way that we can do that is to preserve [Music] it. The island itself will take care of us once we take care of [Music] it. [Music]