Tag Archives: Caribbean fiction
Blacktip Island Weather
Sunday, July 3, 2022
Temperature: 92
Humidity: 67%
Precipitation: Incoming
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Blacktip Island Players Will Stage Dante’s ‘Inferno’ At Multiple Sites
Gustave Doré’s depiction of greedy sinners being punished Hell’s Fourth Circle. The Blacktip Island Community Players will stage all nine levels of Hell at nine different sites this weekend.
For its annual Dog Days Drama summer theater offering this year, the Blacktip Island Community Players will perform its take on 14th-Century Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s ‘Inferno,’ depicting the poet’s descent into Hell with the aid of Roman poet Virgil, in a progression of performances at multiple sites across the Caribbean island this weekend.
“It’ll be like a progressive dinner, but with acting instead of food,” BICP director Doris Blenny said. “We’ll start with Limbo at the Tail Spinner bar up at the north end, then work our way down the coast with performances at various resorts and whatnot, until the ninth and final stop at the Last Ballyhoo. Blacktip is in Circle Two or Three by nature, with all the lust and gluttony here, so the subject matter is quite apropos.
“Each stage will have Hell level-appropriate themes and drink specials,” Blenny said. “The Spinner, for example, will be made up like the ‘dark wood’ at the start of the poem. The audience enters through a faux-cave mouth, with ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ inscribed above it. Even though that’s more accurately true of the Ballyhoo.”
BICP members say the sites for each performance were chosen carefully.
“There’s nine circles of Hell in the ‘Inferno,’ so we needed nine stops,” Payne Hanover said. “Most are at resorts and bars, but we had to improvise on a couple to get nine. There’ll be a couple of pop-up stages along the route. Like in the poem, each stop’ll represent a step in the voyage of the soul through the nether regions. Or some such.”
Announced stages and sin themes are:
- The Tail Spinner—First Circle/Limbo
- Diddley’s Landing—Second Circle/Lust
- Sandy Bottoms’ Beach Resort—Third Circle/Gluttony
- The Sand Spit bar— Fourth Circle/Greed
- Blacktip Haven—Fifth Circle/Wrath
- Club Scuba Doo—Sixth Circle/Heresy
- Eagle Ray Cove—Seventh Circle/Violence
- Undisclosed location—Eighth Circle/Fraud
- The Last Ballyhoo—Ninth Circle/Treachery
“All the performances’ll be after dark, of course,” Hanover said. “Actors and guests’ll car pool or bike from site to site. Drinking’ll be expected throughout the process, and we’re taking bets on how many people actually remember the last few stops the next day. That’s why we’re staging it twice, on Saturday and Sunday, so folks have the chance to see the parts they missed. Or forgot.”
The cast includes:
- Jessie Catahoula as Dante
- Marina DeLow as Virgil
- Payne Hanover as Charon
- Dermott Bottoms as Lucifer
- Lee Helm, Alison Diesel, Finn Kiick and Val Schrader as Assorted Sinners
Spectators are encouraged to wear Italian Renaissance apparel, or any Renaissance-inspired clothing. All are also encouraged to behave in a sinful manner, preferably in keeping whatever Circle they find themselves in. Proceeds from the performance will go to pay off Dermott Bottoms’ multiple bar tabs to safeguard the island’s economy.
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Blacktip Island Weather
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Temperature: 88
Humidity: 68%
Precipitation: Not happening
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Blacktip Island Scientists Plan Cowboy-Style Grouper Roundup
Blacktip Island ichthyologists this week are building a giant corral out of fish nets to hold all the small Caribbean island’s Nassau grouper, which they plan to round up next week for tracking and study. (photo courtesy of W. Carter)
A group of Blacktip Island marine scientists Thursday announced they will stage a Wild West-themed Nassau grouper roundup next week so they can implant location transponders in as many of the fish as possible to track their movements and behaviors.
“We’ve been randomly tagging Nassaus for years, but it doesn’t give us an accurate picture of their habits,” Tiperon University-Blacktip marine science professor Goby Graysby said. “Rather than continuing all higgledy-piggledy, our plan is to round up every grouper on the island in one big pen so we can stick ‘em all.
“It’s a big project, and we’ll need every volunteer diver we can get,” Graysby said. “To encourage participation, we decided to model it after an Old West cattle drive. Without the horses and lassos, of course. But we will have divers, some on underwater scooters, herding the groupers into a big net enclosure just out from the public pier. Then we can tag them all at one time.”
Organizers expect the roundup to be a multi-day affair.
“Blacktip’s a small enough island, it’s likely we can get almost all the Nassaus,” Ginger Bass said. “Thing is, it’s also big enough it’ll likely take us several days to get all the fish corraled and tagged. Weeks, even, depending on the number of herders we get.
“We’ll have our aqua-buckaroos working ‘round the clock, and sleeping on boats,” Bass said. “There’ll be a chuckwagon-style pontoon boat bringing meals to herders so they don’t waste time going home and cooking dinner. If this works out like we think it will, this could be the new standard for fish tagging worldwide.”
Island environmentalists, however, opposed the plan.
“Why do they need every Nassau to have a transponder?” ecologist Harry Pickett said. “They can’t study the grouper without terrorizing them? In a marine park. And what about the other reef creatures they’ll traumatize? And the coral they’ll damage?
“This central net-corral they’ve installed is anchored in living reef and will cause irreparable damage,” Pickett said. “And once they release the grouper, what guarantee is there the fish will go back to the section of reef they came from? They might just stay there, and there’d be no groupers anywhere else on the island.”
Organizers remained optimistic.
“We’ll have contests as we go along, to keep volunteer fis-pokes engaged,” Graysby said. “We’ll have time trials, where individual divers compete to see who can round up and tag a grouper the fastest. Like an underwater rodeo. This could become the Tiperons’ national sport. Maybe even get in the Olympics when we host them.
“We also encourage all participants to dress in Western-themed scuba gear,” Graysby said. “We’ve seen some nice neoprene cowboy hats and vests already. And rumor has it several folks’ll be turning up in leather chaps.”
Participants will receive free meals during the roundup, and ‘Grouper Wrangler’ t-shirts afterwards.
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Happy Dolphin Day from an undisclosed position somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere!
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Blacktip Island Weather
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Temperature: 85
Humidity: 61%
Precipitation: On the way
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
Sargassum Festival Kicks Off Blacktip Island’s Summer Season
The continued influx of sargassum choking Blacktip Island’s beaches will be the focus of Sunday’s inaugural Stink Off festival at Sandy Bottoms Beach Resort, celebrating the rotting seaweed. (photo by Wendy Beaufort/BTT staff)
Blacktip Island will mark the beginning of summer this Sunday with its first-ever Stink Off Sargassum Festival, a lemons-to-lemonade approach to the waves of decomposing sea algae flooding the small Caribbean island’s beaches and coastal waters, organizers said Thursday.
“Sargassum’s here to stay, so we’re making the best of it,” Stink Off committee chair Jay Valve said. “Sure, all the rotting seaweed piled on the beaches make it tough to get to the water, and the smell’ll about knock you out if you’re downwind, but rather than cut and run, we’re gonna celebrate it.
“We’ll have a sargassum sculpture contest, a sargassum cook-off, and sargassum fights for the kids,” Valve said. “There’ll also be a swim-in-sargassum race, a name-that-biting-fly contest and a sargassum-themed parade on the beach, where participants will dress as sargassum, or any creature that lives in or around it. It’ll truly be fun for the entire family.”
Many on the island welcomed the event’s positivity.
“It’s great folks are focusing on how to move forward despite this stinky nuisance,” Angela Fisher said. “I’m looking forward to the Most Unusual Use contest—with ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ divisions—the sargassum-based skin care products and the Stank Neutralizer event. It’s also great they’re providing complimentary cortisone showers and oxygen treatment for all participants.”
Others questioned the wisdom of celebrating the decomposing algae.
“Big picture, embracing a nuisance is a great way to raise peoples’ spirits, but there is a downside, health wise, in this case” public health director Dr. Azul Tang said. “Rotting sargassum releases hydrogen sulfide. That’s what gives it that rotten egg smell. But hydrogen sulfide is also highly toxic and can cause severe respiratory distress, or even death.
“The idea of frolicking in miles of this stuff, of physical exertion while breathing large concentrations of toxic gas, is medically irresponsible,” Tang said. “We can’t stop it, though, so we’ll have both our medical staff nearby, with lassoes, to rescue any participants who pass out.”
Community leaders, meanwhile, are poised to make the most of the event.
“You’ve got to seize opportunities like this,” de facto island mayor Jack Cobia said. “We’re losing tourism dollars now because of the sargassum. This idea of Jay’s’ll turn that around. We’re gonna market Blacktip as the sargassum capitol of the Caribbean.
“We aim to get folks coming to Blacktip because of the sargassum,” Cobia said. “We’ll have a sargassum museum, interactive sargassum tours and an underwater viewing chamber. We’re also doing t-shirts, caps and hoodies made from 100 percent repurposed Blacktip Island sargassum. And they won’t be exported, so folks’ll have to come here to get them. Couple of us are also working on ways to bottle the gas to export for riot control.”
Stink Off activities are scheduled to start at noon Sunday at Sandy Bottoms Beach Resort. The parade will start at 4 p.m. Respirators are recommended for all events.
Filed under best scuba diving novels, Caribbean, Scuba Diving
The Blacktip Times 