ANDROS ISLAND
There are good reasons why so few people go to the west coast of Andros. Red Bays is in the far NW corner, but south of that there are no settlements or fuel or supplies until you reach Cuba. Charlie Bethell and Cindy run the Flamingo Cay Club up inside Wide Opening, and they are good people to know; but Charlie has to fly in all his supplies and cannot offer much to passing boats. There are no safe harbours on the west coast, though a four foot draft can be carried into a few of the creeks where there is all around protection with plenty of current and a zillion bugs.
There are, however, some excellent reasons to spend time on this uninhabited coast – fish, turtles, birds, and solitude. Androsians claim the finest bonefishing in the Bahamas, and the fish are found over so many miles of creeks and flats that it would take a lifetime to fish all the habitats. There are significant populations of sea turtles, and the birds, including flamingos, are magnificent. If you want to be alone, fish, and savor the wild life the west coast of Andros could be your place.
October 18th Trueranda Cox and Ortam Rolle arrived in Spanish Wells on the Fast Ferry from Nassau. Both girls are members of the Young Bahamian Marine Scientists (YBMS). Trueranda works for BREEF and is a BESS scholarship student, and Ortam is working for YBMS. Both plan to attend college next year.
On October 20th, after the usual hustle to get underway we left Spanish Wells for Chub Cay where we took on fuel at the Berry Island Club and then spent the night at anchor. The next day we ran 100 miles from Chub Cay to anchor inside Williams Island and go turtling on the west side of Billy Island.
Our mission was to check the major habitats identified by Karen Bjorndal and Alan Bolten in their excellent 2006 and 2007 surveys of the west side of Andros. We wanted to survey the habitats for numbers of turtles, species composition, and infection from fibropapillomatosis; and we wanted to tag and release as many turtles as possible and collect skin samples for DNA analysis. The DNA will allow us to determine (with a very high probability) where the turtles were born.
Strong easterly winds forced us to work only on the west side of Billy Island, but we had good light. The dominating characteristic of this part of Andros is mud – knee deep in most places. The flats around Billy are all this kind of soft mud which is stirred up by the wind, bonefish, turtles, and the outboard. We probably chased 4 turtles for every one we finally caught, because we would lose sight of the turtles in the muddy water.
In three days we caught 12 turtles, six of which were infected with fibropapillomas – one as badly as I have ever seen. The turtle had a lot of difficulty swimming with all the drag.
We have positively identified three islands in the Bahamas where we find green turtles infected with fibropapillomatosis – Andros, Grand Bahama, and Crooked Island. All of the turtles are in relatively shallow water. We still do not know how this herpes type virus is transmitted or why it is found in some habitats and not others. Shallow water and muddy bottom seem to be common characteristics in the Bahamas, but we need to learn a lot more. The best we can do in the field is continually document the presence of the infection and interview local fishermen to learn what they know about the appearance of the infection and the locations where they find it.
Anyone who knows Andros would ask how we managed with the bugs. The answer is that we anchored far enough offshore to miss the mosquitoes, but the doctor flies nailed us while we were turtling. For every turtle we tagged, we each killed twenty flies – mostly after they had drawn blood. I had to laugh watching the girls standing in the bow hopping around, trying to hold on to the bow line, watch the turtle, point with the net, and swat flies at the same time. I was back aft trying to keep my eye on the turtles, drive the boat, and kill flies. I was in too much pain to laugh at myself. Finally we found an insect repellent cream that helped a little.
Charlie Bethell’s Flamingo Cay Club is a special place. We anchored as close as we could at low tide - 2 miles off Wide Opening in a good lee despite the distance offshore. Right away, we hopped in the speed boat and ran up the channel. Just as we approached the mangrove creek to the club, a friend of Charlie’s arrived in his float plane, so we let him pass and followed him up the creek which was barely wide enough for the floats, and the wing tips often brushed the mangroves on either side – quite an act. The east wind was keeping the tide from rising, so we couldn’t get FOXY LADY into the channel the next morning and had to stay offshore. We did, however, spend a wonderful afternoon and evening at Flamingo Cay. It was a real treat for the girls to spend a few hours socializing with someone other than myself.
We hoped to tag some loggerhead turtles which are abundant in a couple of the creeks. We saw plenty of loggerheads blow, but the water was so muddy there was no chance to catch them. The only way to catch any turtles was to chase them down in the shallower water where the creeks meet the flats. At the head of Great Loggerhead Creek we caught one green turtle (infected with fibropapillomas).
Charlie Bethell was able to sell us some gas, so we could run 30 miles south of Wide Opening to work in Miller Creek where we counted 8 turtles blowing as we ran the two miles up to the flats. Near a rocky bar in the shallow water we found a beautiful 100 pound loggerhead which Trueranda went overboard to capture. We would have spent more time in Miller Creek, but thick clouds developed overhead and made it impossible to find the turtles.
After our day in Miller Creek, it was time to head back to Chub Cay and meet up with GERONIMO, the sailing school vessel owned by St. George’s School. They also tag turtles.
It was a twelve hour run to Chub Cay, but the weather was beautiful, and we arrived in time to fill up with diesel and contact GERONIMO whose crew had caught 4 turtles in the creek that afternoon. We made arrangements to meet them outside the creek the next morning.
The day with the GERONIMO crew was one of those magical days when everything comes together. The early morning looked iffy. We saw a few turtles but the tide was low, and there were clouds. In only an hour, though, we had caught a few turtles, and we just kept at it as the tide rose and the sky cleared. We used two boats and rotated crews with the four or five people on the beach. Our best turtle was the one we chased out of the creek into deep water. Meredith, the GERONIMO 1st Mate, swam almost the whole mile and finally caught the turtle. But all of the kids got in the water at some time during the chase. It was a group effort, and our girls did well.
We ended the day with 17 green turtles, proving the population in the creek has increased dramatically.
That night I took the girls up to the Berry Island Club for an excellent supper of grouper, cracked conch, peas and rice, and salad after a 30 minute ride dodging potholes in an ATV – an out-island adventure meal.
The next morning I committed us to a day off for rest and shelling. We went up to the sand bore west of the cay for shells and then dove in the channel on the west side of Chub for biscuits and urchins. The girls got a pretty good selection, especially of the oblong delicate biscuits. Then back to hot dogs and packaged potatoes for supper. That was the best we could do at the commissary.
The run back to Spanish Wells was exhausting in 20-25 knot southerly winds. The girls did a good job getting off the dock and letting the tow ropes out to full length when we cleared the marina before they sat down and slept. The seas were really cranky and rough, so I ran down to Nassau to get a lee. The water was reasonable north of New Providence and the rest of the way to Spanish Wells, and the girls came alive and ate some lunch. We made it to Muddy Hole by 1800 just as it started to pour rain.
We were back in the land of restaurants and stores and had cracked conch and grouper from Norma’s Take-Away while we watched “Grey’s Anatomy” to which the girls had become devoted.
The next morning we went to visit the Spanish Wells All-Age School. True met a former teacher who asked her to talk to her students about the BESS scholarship program in the afternoon. Interestingly, when I asked the 11th grade how many hoped to go to college, all but one raised their hands. When I asked the 10th grade the same question it was just the opposite – only one girl raised her hand. That is a better average than in previous years.
The next afternoon the girls were on the Fast Ferry back to Nassau. They had been on board FOXY LADY for three weeks. Despite the long runs down and back to Andros, the muddy water, doctor flies, and the strong easterlies, we had had a good trip. We confirmed a lot of the work done previously by Bjorndal and Bolten, collected DNA samples from the captured turtles, and gained an excellent contact in Charlie Bethell who is a force in marine conservation in Andros.
