Tag Archives: Caribbean fiction

January 23, 2016 · 5:49 pm

Locals Protests Pay-For-Junk Plan At Blacktip Island Dump

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Blacktip Island residents may soon have to pay for items they remove from the island’s landfill if proposed legislation is passed.

 

A government proposal to charge for items taken from Blacktip Island’s garbage dump sparked a protest Friday in the small Caribbean community.

Known as ‘Home Depot’ to locals, the dump is often the first stop for local DIY projects.

Authorities say the new fees are necessary to fund the island’s public works. The proposal calls for repurposed garbage to be sold by weight or the assessed value of items, whichever is greater.

“Public services here are strapped,” landfill supervisor Harry Wrasse said. “We can’t afford to let people just walk away with junk anymore. We’ve got to squeeze all the juice we can from our oranges, whether folks like it or not.

“End of the day, if it’s in the government landfill, it belongs to the government,” Wrasse said. “Dumps are expensive, what with salary, benefits, fines and having to buy new garbage trucks every six months when our drivers get drunk and drive into the booby pond.”

Locals picketing the dump Friday afternoon disagreed.

“It’s the public landfill. It’s the people’s garbage,” resident Palometa Fischer said. “Assigning arbitrary values to stuff that’s been discarded is modern-day piracy.

“This is a case of one tin-plated government functionary abusing what little power they’ve given him,” Fischer said. “And you think it’s coincidence there’s no system in place to keep track of the fees? Harry and his cronies’re pocketing the money.”

Other locals were concerned about the fees’ effects on their lifestyle.

“Dump diving’s a Blacktip tradition,” resident Ginger Bass said. “Now there’ll be no more salvaged tin roofing, no more fire pits made from washer drums, no more expired fire extinguisher fights.

“We’re telling everybody to boycott the place, keep their junk,” Bass said. “Government honchos are talking out of both side of their mouths. First they say we have to reuse and recycle, then they make it harder for us to do that. There’s more here than meets the eye.”

Others in the community are taking further steps to undermine the planned fees.

“If a washing machine or junked car never makes it to the dump, well, the government can’t charge for it, can they?” Fischer said. “We’re making a list of who has what to throw away.”

“Worst case, we’ll start our own co-op dump where folks can swap stuff for free,” Fischer said.

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January 15, 2016 · 8:56 am

Blacktip Island Fisherman Militia Seizes Marine Park

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Blacktip Island fisherman militia members set out Thursday morning to reinforce their Blacktip Underwater Marine Park blockade.

 

An anti-government fisherman militia Wednesday seized Blacktip Island’s world-renowned Blacktip Underwater Marine Park, demanding scuba diving there be banned and the mooring sites returned to local fishermen.

Militia members armed with pole spears, hand lines and fishing poles tied skiffs to all mooring balls off the coast and blocked shore access to the park.

The action is the latest in a series of fisherman versus scuba diver confrontations on the small Caribbean island.

“The government had no right to set this stretch of coast aside for foreigners. No right to outlaw fishing,” local fisherman Dermott Bottoms said. “This is generations of resentment finally boiling over.

“We’re a democracy, you know, and no one voted on the park, or was even asked about it,” Bottoms said. “This is our vote to ban divers. It’s our water. We’re taking it back.”

The action has divided families in the small community.

“Scuba tourism’s our only industry,” said Sandy Bottoms, owner of Sandy Bottoms Beach Resort and Dermott Bottoms’ cousin. “With the park shut down, there’s no reason for divers to come here. This’s killing us. I got payroll to meet, mouths to feed, a swimming pool to pay for.

“Dermott and his buddies waving gaff hooks at people doesn’t help, either,” Sandy Bottoms said. “They can say those spears are for defense all they want, but our guests are intimidated.”

The protestors defended their right to carry fishing implements.

“These are legal pole spears,” Dermott Bottoms said. “Gaff hooks, too. Some divers get scared, that’s their doing, not ours. I’ll give up my fishing pole when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

Visiting scuba divers are angry at not being able to dive in the park.

“I don’t give a wrasse’s ass what these yahoos are protesting,” Eagle Ray Divers guest Leah Shore said. “I paid a ton on money to come here and look at fish, and by God, that’s what I mean to do.”

Violence was averted Thursday afternoon when island authorities stopped a group of divers wielding tank bangers from storming the militia’s lines.

“We nipped this one before things got ugly,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “Bussed the divers over to the east side and told them that was a marine park, too.

“We’ve hesitated to confront militia members for fear of things escalating,” Marquette said. “If we try to force the fishermen out, a peaceful situation could turn violent. Also, there’s about 35 of them and only one of me.”

Militia members, meanwhile, vow they won’t leave anytime soon.

“Happiness is a warm hand line spool,” Bottoms said. “‘Specially when you whack it upside some bureaucrat’s pointy head.”

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January 8, 2016 · 5:58 am

Scuba Divers Find Lemming Crab Graveyard Off Blacktip Island

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Lemming crab shells litter the sand 200 feet beneath the surface on Blacktip Island’s south end. Local biologists say the shells, found by technical scuba divers, confirm rumors of the crabs committing mass suicide the first of every year.

 

Technical scuba divers on a training dive Wednesday discovered what is believed to be Blacktip Island’s legendary lemming crab graveyard off the island’s remote southeast coast.

“The crab population drops dramatically every January, and we suspected a site like this existed,” said local wildlife manager Crusty Station said. “The salt-cured, faux-ivory carapaces wash up on south end beaches all the time. They’re the Holy Grail for beachcombers, jewelers and oriental homeopaths.

“They found the shells down past 200 feet, just below the bluff,” Station said. “Every indication is thousands of crabs charged off the cliff en masse.”

Lemmings crabs are a subspecies of the common Caribbean land crab, found only on Blacktip Island. Their name is derived from their suspected mass suicides, akin to those of the Scandinavian rodents.

“Where they go has always been a mystery,” long-time resident Frank Males said. “One day the island is overrun with crabs, the next there are none to be found. There’ve always been tales of them running off the bluff behind The Last Ballyhoo, but there’s also tales of a talking platypus back there, too.

“This evidence of mass suicide smacks of a post-holiday depression sort of thing,” Maples said. “It’s a stressful time for everyone.”

Island researchers are eager to study the site.

“We’d speculated that once the crab population hits a tipping point, something snaps species-wide,” Tiperon University-Blacktip behavioral biologist Porgy Cottonwick said. “The population shift from maximum carrying capacity to near extinction was more than natural predation or hungry holiday revelers could account for.

“Our studies will focus on whether this is an attempted migration gone wrong, or possibly an instinctive suicide urge to preserve the species,” Cottonwick said

Locals say such behavior is to be expected on the small Caribbean island.

“Biological urges are hard to overcome,” local handyman Dermott Bottoms said. “See this kind of thing at the Last Ballyhoo and the Sand Spit bars every night.

“See the same thing in divemasters, too,” Bottoms said. “Now they’re here, now they’re gone. Of course, divemasters aren’t killing themselves, but there’s those who wish they would.”

Island officials, meanwhile, have cordoned off the area to stop treasure hunters from diving to the extreme depths to collect the valuable shells.

“Those shells bring a pretty penny on the black market,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “Folks grind them up, use them for back pain. And as aphrodisiacs. But your chances of coming back alive from that deep are slim.

“We’re not going to have divers dying trying to get crab shells,” Marquette said. “They wash up dead on resort beaches, that’s bad for business.”

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January 1, 2016 · 2:34 pm

Blacktip Island Entrepreneur Repurposes Selfie Sticks As Safety Aids

selfie sticks

A prototype of Blacktip Island entrepreneur “Doc” Plank’s A Grand Eyes bamboo gauge extender. The device takes its inspiration from the ubiquitous selfie sticks.

 

Blacktip Island scuba manufacturer Bamboo You kicked off the new year Friday by unveiling its new line of repurposed selfie sticks designed to help older scuba divers better see their gauges underwater.

“As divers get older, their close-up vision goes to hell,” said Bamboo You founder Piers “Doc” Plank. “Gauges with bigger numbers can only do so much, no matter how far away the divers hold them.

“People keep joking they need longer arms,” Plank said. “Seeing everybody running around with these telescoping sticks, using them as gauge extenders was a no brainer.”

Marketed as A Grand Eyes, the sticks are made from locally-sourced bamboo.

“A Grand Eyes do so much more than address our customers’ presbyopia,” Bamboo You marketing director Christina Mojarra said. “Like all Bamboo You products, they’re 100 percent natural and made from a renewable island resource. They’re good for Blacktip and good for the planet.”

The new devices have already won the praises of dive professionals.

“We banned those damned camera sticks on all our boats a while back,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said. “People kept jamming them into the reef, and there were several unfortunate incidents when sticks got stuck in uncomfortable places on a rolling dive boat.

“Now, though, Doc found a way to turn them to a useful purpose,” Latner said. “We got a lot less divers going into deco because they can’t see their depth or time or nitrogen loading.”

Scuba divers who tested the sticks were impressed as well.

“I was about to give up diving,” said dive guest Buddy Brunnez. “This gizmo’s a game changer, though. Now I just zip my computer out as far as I need. And if my eyes get worse, well, I can zip the stick out farther.”

Some of the Caribbean island’s dive staff, however are dubious of the new devices.

“Whether it’s a camera or a gauge console on the end of the stick, they’re still a hazard,” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Lee Helm said. “Divers are still bashing the reef, but this time under the guise of safety. It’s lipstick on a pig, really.”

Bamboo You officials remain unfazed by the criticism.

“With scuba diver demographics skewing older every year, A Grand Eyes are the wave of the future,” Mojarra said. “Divers can accessorize with extra long high pressure hoses to get gauge consoles as far away as they need to read the numbers.

“We’re marketing the sticks to island restaurants as menu extenders, too,” Mojarra said. “We expect this to be one of our best selling products, right up there with bamboo weights and nitrox snorkels.”

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December 25, 2015 · 5:27 am

Mersquatch Steals Blacktip Island Christmas

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A security camera image of Blacktip Island’s Christmas day thief making off with a bag of stolen holiday items. Residents believe the thief is the island’s legendary mersquatch, an aquatic relative of the more-famous sasquatch.

 

Blacktip Island residents were shocked Friday morning to find their homes had been robbed during the night. Security camera images show a creature matching the description of the Caribbean island’s legendary mersquatch making off with bags of stolen goods.

Hand-fishing lines, hooks and seaweed strands were left behind in place of the stolen items.

“It was a God-awful sight, and a God-awful smell,” said robbery victim Rocky Shore. “The whole house stinks like someone left a mess of fish in the sun too long.

“Whoever, whatever it was, he cleaned us out,” Shore said. “The kids’ presents, our Christmas dinner, the honk-hoozles, everything. He even stole our Festivus pole.”

Island police are unsure of a motive for the thefts, but were quick to discount reports of a non-human thief.

“Best guess, it’s a prank,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “No one would have any need for many of the stolen items, and the thief certainly couldn’t sell any of them.

“Our working theory is the individual captured on camera is someone dressed in a gorilla suit,” Marquette said. “There’s several people on island with the bulk to carry that off, and criminal records as well. Problem is, most of them were passed out across the Last Ballyhoo bar last night. But we’re leaving no drunk unturned.”

Authorities are also interviewing a young girl believed to be the only eyewitness to the crimes.

“Little Shelly Bottoms got up for a sneak peek at the tree and surprised the thing,” Blacktip Island mayor Jack Cobia said. “She said it patted her on the head and gave her a glob of seaweed. If that thing had been violent, though, I shudder to think what might have happened.”

Wildlife experts blame the thefts on increased development encroaching on mersquatch habitat.

“These creatures have roamed Blacktip for centuries,” said Tiperon University-Blacktip anthropology professor Nelson Pilchard. “With the island’s recent building boom, we’re getting more and more reports of human-mersquatch confrontation.

“All the commotion people make during the holidays would be incredibly stressful to a solitary creature like this,” Pilchard said. “Most likely, the items were stolen in an attempt to reduce stressors in its environment. Humans aren’t the only ones who find the holidays taxing.”

Some residents, however, found reason to be thankful for the thefts.

“He was mean to steal my toys, but Santa Squatch took bad stuff away, too,” eight-year-old Shelly Bottoms said. “This year I won’t have to eat nasty candied yams with the marshmallows on top. Or Brussels sprouts.”

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December 18, 2015 · 5:02 am

Blacktip Island Nativity Play Violence Injures Twenty

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A cell phone image of the moment Blacktip Island’s Nativity play violence spilled into the audience at the Our Lady of Blacktip church Thursday night. (Photo courtesy of Barb Schaft)

 

 

Blacktip Island’s reef-themed Nativity play at Our Lady of Blacktip cathedral was cut short Thursday evening when an altercation broke out among the play’s participants.

“Lee Helm’s been carrying a flame for Alison Diesel for years,” play director Doris Blenny said. “He was none too happy when we picked her to play Mary, and him to play Second Shepherd.

“Apparently, Lee downed all the Communion wine backstage pre-play,” Blenny said. “Then when Gage Hoase, as Joseph, put his arm around Alison, well, Lee let his emotions get the better of him.”

An onstage scuffle spilled into the audience, sending playgoers scurrying for exits.

“The Angelfish had just started singing ‘Paradise City,’ when a shepherd in a wetsuit jumped across the crib and grabbed Joseph’s throat,” spectator Wendy Beaufort said. “The wise men tried to help Joseph, but the other shepherds had their boy’s back. It’s crazy the damage a bamboo shepherd’s crook can do.

“The fight tumbled off the stage and into us,” Beaufort said. “I t was mayhem. Joseph bashed the shepherd with Baby Jesus right in front of me. People were stomping on each other to get to the doors. I crawled under pews and hopped out a window.”

Authorities say seven participants and 13 audience members were taken to the island medical clinic.

“Most of the injuries occurred in the stampede to exit the building,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “The most serious injuries were sustained by players onstage.

“We have six actors, including Mr. Helm, in custody on multiple charges,” Marquette said. “The most serious charge is assault with a sea fan palm tree. And battery with a mock infant.”

Event organizers say the incident is Blacktip Island’s worst theater-related violence since 2011’s ‘Cats’ debacle.

“We’re still trying to finding Baby Jesus, two of the Wise Men’s dogs and any of the shepherd’s land crabs,” Blenny said. “Antonio Fletcher just announced he’s having a holiday crab boil at his place, but I don’t think that’s related.”

Blacktip Island’s religious community condemned the violence.

“It’s heartbreaking to see this kind of behavior in a church, especially during the holidays,” said the former-Reverend Jerrod Ephesians, head of the Blacktip Island Ecumenical Council. “This was a Nativity play. No one was supposed to take it seriously.

“I mean, it’s Blacktip Island,” Ephesians said. “There’s never been a virgin on this little rock. And good luck finding one wise man here, much less three.”

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December 11, 2015 · 10:39 am

Blacktip Island Plane Wreckage Could Be Amelia Earhart’s

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The Lockheed Electra’s broken wings rest upside down in the shallow waters off Blacktip Island’s northeast coast. Aviation experts say the airplane could be that of Amelia Earhart, who disappeared along with the plane in 1937.

Recreational scuba divers Wednesday discovered the remains of a 1930s twin-engine aircraft off Blacktip Island’s rugged northeast coast local authorities say could be that of famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

“The aircraft looks to have been a Lockheed Model 10 Electra,” said local aviation expert Whitney Pratt. “It was modified with a large fuel tank, and some of its windows were intentionally obscured.

“An Electra with those modifications fits the description of the one flown by Amelia Earhart on her unsuccessful attempt to circumnavigate the globe,” Pratt said. “There’s also the matter of the initials ‘A.E.’ scrawled on the fuselage.

“If it is Earhart’s plane, the big question is how it got here,” Pratt said. “She disappeared over the South Pacific.”

Marine scientists say the soft coral growing on the wreckage deepens the mystery.

“The wings have live carnation coral on them that’s indigenous to the southern Pacific ocean,” Tiperon University-Blacktip biologist Goby Graysby said. “We’re 5,000 miles from where any Dendronephthya should be. I can’t speak to the aircraft details, but yeah, there’s a South Pacific connection somewhere.”

The find has sparked talk of the so-called Blacktip Triangle where hundreds of boats and aircraft are reported to vanish, sometimes reappearing years later.

“All kinds of compass variations out there, you know,” longtime resident Antonio Fletcher said. “Space and time work different in the Triangle. Boats go missing. Lots of scuba divers get lost, too, but that’s something else. Bloody Marys, mostly.

“Plane could’ve crashed somewhere else and been transported here, like those Flight 19 bombers that got zapped to Kathmandu,” Fletcher said. “Happens all the time, you just don’t hear about it.”

Island officials are skeptical of the Blacktip Triangle theory.

“Most of those disappearances are exaggerated, or flat out made up,” Island Police Constable Rafe Marquette said. “Civil Aviation divers are examining the wreckage. If this is Miss Earhart’s airplane, there’s lots of non-supernatural explanations.

“If someone wanted to fake their death and disappear forever, transmitting a false position and then flying halfway around the world’d be a great way to do it,” Marquette said.

Blacktip Island community leaders, meanwhile, are drawing up plans for an interactive educational facility devoted to Earhart.

“We’re gonna soak visitors in what it was like to be Amelia Bedelia. I mean Earhart,” local entrepreneur Rich Skerritt said. “The centerpiece’ll be a life-sized mockup of that plane linked to a flight simulator so folks can have a feel what flying it was like. We’ll have shirts and caps and coffee mugs for sale, too.

“Our goal’s to make Blacktip Island the hottest destination in the Caribbean. Or the South Pacific,” Skerritt said. “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?”

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December 4, 2015 · 9:55 am

Blacktip Island University To Offer Ph.D.s In Divemastering

DM PhDs

Divemasters working on Blacktip Island’s dive boats will soon be able to earn their Doctorate of Scuba Diving at Tiperon University’s Blacktip campus.

 

Tiperon University-Blacktip officials announced Thursday the school will offer advanced degrees in divemastering when the winter semester begins next month.

Dubbed the ‘Ph. Dude’ by local dive professionals, the program will place less emphasis on pedagogy and more on scuba research, its creators said.

“Every divemaster has been trained to teach,” TU-B professor Ernesto Mojarra said. “Our studies will focus on the more cerebral aspects of divemastering that are too often overlooked. We’ll question why we dive and why that matters, with a goal of addressing the existential angst in the heart of every scuba diver.

“This being a scuba-based degree, doctoral dissertations will be written on underwater slates,” Mojarra said. “Oral exams and thesis defenses will be done underwater via an expanded series of hand signals we developed to convey the requisite nuances of thought.”

Island dive managers have embraced the program.

“Diving’s seeing that radical credential creep like everywhere else,” said Club Scuba Doo dive operations manager Finn Kiick. “Used to, you could blast through a DM course and jump on a boat. Now there’s wannabes with diplomas, even bachelor’s degrees.

“You don’t need the doctorate to do the job,” Kiick said. “But you totally need it to land the job.”

Industry analysts, however, aren’t as upbeat.

“It’s a status thing,” said Lou Luxfer president of the Dive Industry Coral Keepers. “Ops managers like to beat their chests about how highly trained their staffs are. They overlook whether customers are getting better supervision because of these advanced degrees.”

Local dive professionals echoed Luxfer’s concerns.

“It’s an empty piece of paper that doesn’t ensure diver safety,” said Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Lee Helm. “The university’s encouraging silly credentialism, and making a fortune in the process.

“The research and the dissertation require years of work,” Helm said. “With the uni collecting tuition and fees the whole time. There’s no way to pay off that sort of debt on a divemaster’s wages.”

TU-B’s Mojarra brushed those criticisms aside.

“Most of our candidates aim to work in academia,” Mojarra said. “Expensive? Sure. But what better way to break free of the dive bum lifestyle that traps so many people for decades? You divemaster for more than five years, people start looking at you funny. As well they should.”

NAUI, SSI and IANTD have approved the program for their dive leaders. PADI does not yet recognize the program’s accreditation, though the agency is working on a PADI-specific divemastering doctorate of its own.

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November 27, 2015 · 11:36 am

Blacktip Island Fishermen, Environmentalists Create Fish-Kill Zones

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If the planned fish-kill zones are approved, large stretches of Blacktip Island’s coast such as Spider Bight will be off-limits to scuba divers.

Blacktip Island’s fishermen and environmentalists this week formed an unlikely coalition aimed at safeguarding the Caribbean island’s critically-threatened Tiperon skunk bass population.

The skunk bass, the Tiperon Islands’ national fish, has become rare on island reefs due to overfishing and habitat destruction. The plan calls for the creation of no-dive zones where only fishing would be allowed.

“First we thought the bass’d stopped biting,” said fishing advocate Clete Horn. “Then we realized the bass left about the time the scuba diving industry took off. Divers come here from all over the world. They scare the fish and damage the coral.

“If there’s diving-only marine parks on the island, there should be fishing-only parks, too,” Horn said. “Get rid of the divers, the fish’ll come back. Then we can kill bass like we used to. And teach our kids how, so they can teach their kids.”

Many Blacktip residents were surprised when local environmentalists backed the concept.

“We can’t stop overfishing, so the hope is we can limit it to certain areas,” environmental activist Harry Pickett said. “It’s a compromise, but without the fishermen’s support, no conservation plan’s going to work.

“The theory’s if all the skunk bass are removed from one area, it’ll create a vacuum,” Pickett said. “Fish from other areas will move in to fill that void and encourage increased spawning in the protected areas. Sure, a lot of bass will be killed, but this way at least some of them have a chance.”

The Department of Fisheries officials, though skeptical, also back the plan.

“Skunk bass have zero protection now,” Fisheries spokesperson Reg Gurnard said. “Some protection’s better than no protection, right?

“Will it piss off some divers? Yeah. But it won’t keep them away. And it’s not like Clete and his buddies could ever fish the reefs clean.”

The plan has met stiff opposition among island entrepreneurs.

“Banning divers’ll kill our business,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said. “And divers won’t come here is there’s no fish to look at. If the dive industry goes under, what passes for an economy on Blacktip will go under, too.”

Fishermen are not swayed.

“These are Blacktip Island fish. They’re family,” said local angler Antonio Fletcher. “We know what’s best for them. Foreigners are welcome to come look at them, but not if it spoils our fishing.

“We’re fighting for our heritage,” Fletcher said. “We got to save these skunk bass from foreign influences so we can kill them. The fish, not the foreign influences.”

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November 20, 2015 · 6:30 am

Labor Dispute Threatens Blacktip Times

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Blacktip Island’s latest union-related strife is poised to silence Blacktip Island’s sole media outlet.

“The French pressroom workers are pushing for $15 an hour and a 25-hour work week,” Blacktip Times publisher Samson Post said. “They’re threatening to shut down the paper if we don’t cave. This is a blatant attack on press freedom.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, hiring an all-French production staff,” Post said. “But now all I hear is Edith Piaf blaring in the break room and knuckleheads hollering this ‘I am Blacktip’ crap. We’re set to lock them out if they don’t co

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