The Tribune

The environmentalist who led the campaign to close Blackbeard’s Cay yesterday asserted she is “cosmically disappointed” in the Government while branding the surviving dolphins’ rescue a “PR stunt”.

Sam Duncombe, the reEarth principal, while renewing calls for the five remaining mammals to be moved to a purpose-built “sanctuary”, told Tribune Business she felt “betrayed” and sidelined by the Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources reaching out instead to Atlantis for help.

Jomo Campbell, minister of agriculture and marine resources, yesterday acknowledged that it was Mrs Duncombe and the non-profit Dolphin Project who first alerted himself and the Government to the surviving dolphins’ plight and the previous deaths of their eight companions at an April 9, 2024 meeting.

However, the reEarth chief told this newspaper that promises to grant the Dolphin Project and its representatives access to Blackbeard’s Cay, located on Balmoral Island of New Providence’s north coast, on April 15 so that they could assess the dolphins’ health never materialised.

Instead, Mrs Duncombe argued that the Government “literally went behind our back” and cut them out while enlisting Atlantis’ help instead. And she asserted that it was unnecessary to put the five surviving dolphins through the “trauma” of being moved to the Paradise Island mega resort’s facilities as they could have been “stabilised” at Blackbeard’s Cay and remained there on a temporary basis.

Mr Campbell yesterday said the surviving dolphins will all undergo a 30-day quarantine at Atlantis where they will receive medical testing and rehabilitation before any decision is made on their long-term fate. However, Mrs Duncombe blasted: “My initial reaction is that there’s been a betrayal between the ministry and us plus the Dolphin Project because we went to them in good faith.

“We offered all the medical care, the generator for free, and the food, and after being told that we would be given access on April 15 everything went silent. They literally went behind our back and asked Atlantis to step in..

“To say I am cosmically disappointed in the Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources and Jomo Campbell is an under-statement,” she continued. “What I know is that we’ve already been betrayed once in this. Minister Campbell told me in my meeting on April 10 that he would restore my faith in the public service. It’s anything but that.

“I had spoken to a vet. Those animals could have been cared for where they were without the trauma of being man handled and moved in their current state to something where they have never been before in their lives and perhaps separated from one another.”

Mrs Duncombe echoed fellow Bahamian environmental activist, Gail Woon, in voicing concerns that the five Blackbeard’s Cay dolphins have merely exchanged one captive dolphin facility for another - albeit the Atlantis facilities will represent a significant improvement.

And she was especially fearful that Luis Hernandez, the dolphins’ former caretaker at Blackbeard’s Cay and “the only human they have known” is not part of the team taking care of them at Atlantis. “Those animals are in a very stressed environment right now,” the reEarth chief added. “This was absolutely just not the right move. The only person they have known is not with them and he is heart broken.”

Ric O’Barry, the Dolphin Project’s co-founder and director, also criticised the five surviving dolphins’ rescue from Blackbeard’s Cay as a “PR spectacle” designed to counter the negative publicity The Bahamas was receiving over the mammals’ condition.

“They’ve only lived in this one place on Blackbeard’s Cay and should have received first aid before they were moved. I think it’s unfortunate,” he told Tribune Business. “I think it’s just a PR stunt. They could have received first aid right where they were.

Mr O’Barry said the Dolphin Project had flown a vet to The Bahamas from Hawaii, and she would have been able to perform the necessary bloodwork and other tests to assess the mammals’ health, “stabilise” their condition while shade and other improvements to the Blackbeard’s Cay facility were made, and that would have created sufficient time to “figure out how to get them to a sanctuary”.

Disclosing that the Dolphin Project has performed similar rescues in Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua and Brazil, Mr O’Barry added: “There are so many beautiful islands in The Bahamas where a sanctuary can be done. reEarth has drawn up plans, and my son created the one in Bali.

“That can be duplicated where you have proper weather and, more important, the co-operation with the Government. If you don’t have that, you can’t do anything. If you don’t have the co-operation of the Government you are spinning your wheels. If I feel like I am wasting my time, I will move on to something else. They have the opportunity, and if they still want to do something we’re not far away. But I don’t have too much hope in this government.”

Mrs Duncombe, meanwhile, renewed calls for the five surviving Blackbeard’s Cay dolphins to be moved to a sanctuary while adding it did not have to be a facility created by reEarth or the Dolphin Project.

“I just have so much difficulty understanding why the Dolphin Project was not given the go-ahead to go in, stabilise the animals, give them medical care and, if it was deemed they needed more care, we’d have reached out to Atlantis to help,” she told Tribune Business.

“We’re not that stupid. We’ve said from the first utterances out of my mouth that we wanted to make sure those animals are OK. Was it necessary to move them? It’s such a PR spectacle. It looks like they are the good guys. It is just a monumentally insane situation that they went and man-handled those animals to get them over to Atlantis and make it look like a big rescue operation.

“It just blows my mind. We would rather have had Ric O’Barry go in quietly, do what he needs to do without spectacle, put up shade and evaluate them over a period of time to determine what’s wrong with them. The big brou ha ha to make it look like they were heroes was totally unnecessary. The operation should have happened where they were.”