Cayman Islands Tourism Association president Troy Leacock says unregulated operators in the North Sound cannot continue unchecked.
It’s been a little over a year since legislators voted for the creation of a task force to deal with the challenges Caymanian water-sports operators face in the North Sound and, to date, there’s been no word on when it will be established.
Leacock, who runs Crazy Crab boat charters, expressed disappointment that a promised task force, to review and make recommendations to protect local operators working in the North Sound, has failed to materialise.
“It’s vital that we get traction on [the task force]. I get bombarded every week by photographs of this boat or that operator anchoring in the coral or running up on the reef or this private boat mishandling starfish, stacking them and all of this sort of thing,” Leacock said as he addressed the issue on the Cayman Compass talkshow ‘The Resh Hour’ on 29 Nov.
He said he has forwarded on the images on to the Department of Environment “and I guess they do whatever they can do with them, but we need to prevent these things happening”.
This is not a new complaint from operators who have been working in the North Sound.
West Bay West MP McKeeva Bush, who brought the motion for the task force last December, said Caymanian operators were being squeezed out of what has been a traditional source of income for them.
It’s a view Leacock shared as he said he has been seeing new operators coming into the North Sound, with no training or appreciation for wildlife.
“The snorkelling industry in the North Sound is 100% Caymanian-built. If there’s any segment of our industry that should have protection, it’s that. We have been talking about it for years from before this last election and we need to do something about it. People are getting very upset that nothing seems to be done about it,” Leacock said.
Operators should be trained to work in the Wildlife Interaction Zones and the authorities should limit licences to Caymanians only, he added.
“A lot of our [water-sports] operator community are very distressed at the lack of protection for the multi-generational Caymanians and even the new generation Caymanians in the North Sound,” he said.
By way of example, Leacock said a few months ago a non-Caymanian purchased a $250,000 boat, formed a company, hired a non-Caymanian boat captain and “now we have a new boat operation on the North Sound with a non-Caymanian captain on a work permit”.
Following COVID, he said, this has happened more frequently.
He said no one knows who the Caymanian partner is for that business and he queried whether it was a case of “fronting”.
Caymanian operators, he said, look at that situation and question how it can be allowed to happen.
“Should a non-Caymanian, who’s got the money, be able to go and buy a boat and hire another non-Caymanian and start a business on the North Sound? I don’t think that there’s anybody here who would say that should be able to happen. The question is how do you address it?” he said.
Leacock expects that the issue will be on newly-appointed Minister for Sustainability and Climate Resiliency Katherine Ebanks-Wilks’s agenda as she knows the challenges all too well.
“Miss Kathy is a West Bayer. Her father was in the industry. If there’s any MP that is close [to], not just water sports, but the North Sound water-sports industry, it’s Miss Kathy. I am really hopeful that we will get traction on this,” he said.
The Compass have reached out to the minister and the Department of Environment for an update on the task force, and is awaiting a response.
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