Wild Tobago

Dr Anjani Ganase checks the health of beaches around Tobago. We are fortunate, she believes, that significant areas of the edge between land and sea remain undisturbed. But we also need to be mindful of how buildings and other structures can alter beach habitats. (All photos courtesy Anjani Ganase) Beaches are areas of dynamic interaction between the ocean and the land. Ocean current, wind and waves erode rock and coral skeletons to produce sand that washes ashore. Not all beaches are sandy. Sometimes, beaches are pebbly or composed of coral rubble. We can tell a lot about our beaches and their surroundings from the sand. The colour of the particles and the sizes tell us about the marine habitats as well as the type of rock our islands are made from. Black sand beaches are formed from the erosion of volcanic rock, while white sand beaches come from the breakdown of corals, but there are green and pink sand beaches as well. Beaches are important unique ecosystems with a lot...

Alvin “Dougie” Douglas was born and lived in Tobago all his life. Curiosity about the creatures in the ocean led to his passion and career as master diver and a leader of Tobago underwater expeditions. He is an advocate for our ocean home, and continues to work to inspire more Tobagonian children to explore their marine heritage. In this feature published in Tobago Newsday on May 4, 2017, Alvin Douglas talks about his life and love for the waters around Tobago. When I was about 14, at Signal Hill, my biology teacher brought a fisherman to tell us about sharks. He said that in order to stay alive, sharks had to swim continuously, something about their gill slits. This idea of constant motion intrigued me. In those days, the early 80s, there was one (scuba) dive shop, a club really, on the road to Pigeon Point. Dive Tobago was run by Jimmy Young. I started hanging around there after school. After almost a year of sweeping the shop, cleaning the boat, scraping the hull, generally...