Ocean Cay island from landfill to biodiversity paradise with resilient corals

OCEAN CAY (BAHAMAS) – Arriving on Neverland, two pelicans welcome guests by circling the new lighthouse. Looking down from the top of the 68-metre cruise ship, lines of an impressive blue can be seen that keeps changing hues, becoming ever clearer as it washes over white beaches. It looks like heaven, yet it used to be hell.

There, in the heart of the infinite blue, halfway between Miami and the Bahamas, the island of Ocean Cay today it shines and teems with life as the wind whips its young palm trees and the sun illuminates the bay where turtles arrive and corals fight, but until four years ago it was a completely different story. This island, as it is, did not exist: until 2015 it was simply a landfill, a deposit, a jumble of waste and metals, bulldozers and sand, then abandoned. It was used, especially from the States, as a quarry, or a place to amass scrap, a place to forget things.

Over time, the debris had attached itself to the coral colonies, the soils depleted, nature greyed. However, in 2017, thanks to a vision carried out by the MSC Foundation, the foundation of the MSC shipping company, Ocean Cay was given a second chance. The purpose was twofold: on the one hand commercial, to offer cruise passengers a unique experience, on the other a work of restitution and commitment towards nature and that sea so furrowed by the hulls, in an attempt to rebuild a lost home for biodiversity.

From hell to heaven: the rebirth

So the work began: MSC obtained a 99-year concession from the government of the Bahamas and with an investment of at least 200 million dollars it redeveloped the entire island for three years, transforming it into a marine reserve of 64 square miles at a hundred miles from Miami. They have been recovered and disposed of 7500 tons of metal waste, reclaimed other debris, remodeled the sandbanks (almost 500,000 tons), created the basic infrastructure. Months and months of cleaning before attempting the toughest challenge: giving a chance to the ecosystems of the island too.

One of the first steps was plant more than 75,000 palm trees, small trees and shrubs in all ravines, belonging to over 60 different species. Then, the works to restore splendor to the eight beaches soaked in the turquoise sea and those to create ponds and small lagoons capable of attracting birds: from pelicans to the seagulls are back, but surprisingly even the iguanas.

“They must have come here by ship somehow, probably from Florida, and now the iguanas are partly a problem, as they devastate some of the plants. But it’s normal to deal with these things when you’re struggling to bring life back to the ecosystem,” he explains doctor Owen R. O’Sheabiologist of the MSC Foundation, the man who takes care of the marine reserve and above all the corals on the island.

Yes, because fascinated by the Caribbean colors and the breathtaking waters of Ocean Cay, it’s easy to forget the most complex project for the island that never was: to recover its source of underwater life, those corals which trigger the connections between thousands of species and allow the survival of 25% of all marine organisms. When they started the reclamation, explains O’Shea while showing some coral skeletons, between the high water temperatures due to the climate crisis and the impact of human actions, the reef was in serious trouble. Nearly 400 hard coral colonies have been removed from debris in the sea and relocated to the most pristine seabed to give them an opportunity for resilience.

Looking for the super coral

O’Shea himself, using a structure of intertwined white poles, created a nursery to try – after a long work in the laboratory and in collaboration with the University of Miami and Nova Southeastern University of Fort Lauderdale – to revive and thrive the “super coral”, a species that is better able to adapt and resist the changes of the ocean.

For now, while studies continue, the one identified as a potential “superhero” candidate is the Elkohorn coral, tested between 24 and 32 degrees, subjected to experimental evaluations of survival even in the event of long-term exposure to high water temperatures. The first results are encouraging and, if Elkhoron were to pass the next experiments, it could become the fulcrum of marine restoration. Not only that: if it works, Ocean Cay’s super coral-based method could even be replicated elsewhere.

“Going from an industrial site to a marine reserve, restoring everything to its natural state, was not easy at all, this applies to both the emerged part and the coral reef. In the waters around the island there are many varieties of endangered corals. If we think that globally it is estimated that between 2030 and 2050 between 70% and 90% of coral reefs could become extinct due to overfishing, overheating and pollution, it is right to start looking for solutions. Our personal answer is the super coral project: i.e. identifying – through tests and experimental techniques – a genotype that is resistant to climatic stress, in order to find the best species to reintegrate into the reef to reproduce. Out here – he says Daniela Peakexecutive director of the MSC Foundation, pointing to the sea – there is a crazy wealth of information on corals and we want to study it, but also share it, and then replicate the knowledge elsewhere”. With another important funding, on the side of the island where they dock ships, a research center is in fact being born.

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“The next step – explains the director – is the creation of a laboratory and a center that will also have an experimental aquarium with internal and external tanks for corals. It will be a place for scientific study and dissemination, also to raise awareness among cruise passengers and open the doors to those who intend to study corals. We believe we need a collective response to a global problem, which is not only of the Bahamas, but of everyone”.

The first signs, from Dr. O’Shea’s observations, are encouraging. “When I dive – he says – in some places I have the sensation of being the first in the world to see certain corals and sponges here, and it is beautiful how life is recovering. Some mornings I have sighted hammerhead sharksother turtles or whales. There is hope.”

The island without hotels

The British biologist is, in fact, one of the 125 residents who live on the atoll for most of the year. The peculiarity of Ocean Cay is in fact also this: the presence of man, and his possible impact, is limited. On the strip of sand that stretches for about three kilometers there are no hotels or resorts, just wooden lodgings for those who work in welcoming cruise passengers. The MSC ships arrive from Miami and take tourists to the private island every other day where for a few hours they can enjoy the beauty of the beaches and small dedicated bars or restaurants and then, at nightfall, people go back to sleep on the ship while the island falls asleep amidst the singing of birds and the sound of waves and wind.

“A magic for this place, today paradise on earth, which was once a site where sand was extracted and looked completely different from how it is now: when it was abandoned in 2015 and we took it under management by the government of the Bahamas, it was strongly impacted and it took four years of hard work to clean up the seabed and remove the ferrous debris”, he adds Leonard MassaManaging Director Italy of Msc.

“Today, however, we are happy to see the fruits of this effort: the turtles have recently returned to lay their eggs, just as the corals are showing signs of recovery. We will be increasingly committed to telling what has been done here, so that tourists , enjoy the sun and swim, but then return home with an important baggage of knowledge of what a naturalistic experience of restoring biodiversity is,” he explains.

A challenge within the challenge

To complete the baggage Massa talks about, however, studies and above all time are needed, before witnessing the “back to the future” of the island, the complex enterprise to be achieved. If walking through the sunny streets it is in fact easy to be enraptured by the sight of hundreds of gigantic shells, or by the Caribbean colors of the colonial-style staff quarters, it is much less simple to see what happened underwater. There, estimates the Foundation, over the years 50% of the coral off Ocean Cay has been destroyed and not far off the coast of Florida, the coral cover is now only around 10%.

“We cannot establish when and if the corals here will really thrive again, they are long and delicate processes, often also connected to the impacts of water temperatures or the climate crisis” adds the biologist O’Shea, recalling that the Bahamas are among the countries most affected – by the intensity of the phenomena – by the climate emergency. “But we also have to imagine – comments the expert who has worked for a long time also on Great Barrier Reef in Australia – that a victory in our effort here could also pave the way for coral recovery elsewhere. All of this should be seen as a large laboratory”.

When he finishes speaking it is now evening and the big ship is about to set sail: the tourists return to their cabins, the island empties and the pelicans dive in to hunt for the last fish, before the reborn paradise – whose waters are now finally protected – fall asleep peacefully in the silence of the night.