Still, as Murray reminds the community, the sanctuary is a necessary part of replenishing the fish stock, a way of maintaining the principal within the protected area. “This is like a bank,” Murray said, gesturing toward the water. “So we live off the interest.”
Depleted fish stocks are just one facet of Jamaica’s environmental crisis. Poachers and wildlife traffickers target crocodiles and marine turtles and their eggs. Each year, many baby turtles hatch in Oracabessa, thanks to Melvyn Tennant, a 68-year-old from the U.K. who retired to Jamaica 15 years ago with his wife. He sets out to greet would-be poachers on the beach and educate them that consuming turtles or their eggs doesn’t, in fact, increase virility. He’s also flooded the beachfront with enough light to scare most of them off.
From May to August, when turtles commonly lay 100 to 240 ping pong ball-sized eggs apiece, Tennant enlists patrolmen to surveil the beach at night. Nest survival rates were a paltry 37 percent in 2005 but are up to 81 percent today, he said. In a typical year, he’ll release 25,000 turtles, up from 350 hatchlings in 2005, and he meticulously tags and tracks adult female turtles.
Nearby, at GoldenEye’s lagoon-side bar, Blackwell recently held court. Doctor birds, the island’s streamertail hummingbirds, flew past. While the tree frogs wouldn’t start croaking till dusk, his two phones rang every few minutes with the same amphibian timbre.
Fleming had him hired as a Jamaica location scout for “Dr. No.” Having grown up on the island, Blackwell was already entranced by its tropical beauty. When he saw it begin to vanish, he became determined to stop it.
“In Oracabessa, the fishermen turned from poachers to game keepers, completely,” he said over a rum punch. “For me—for all of us—it’s been a miracle to see what’s happened already in just a few years, how much [the fish] have come back.”
Looking ahead, his biggest challenge isn’t poachers, but Chinese money. Just last year, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said $384 million from China’s Ex-Im Bank would help the island embark on additional construction projects. But the government has also responded positively to Blackwell’s efforts. The Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation will complete its Discovery Center this year in Clarendon, and the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica is funding community-based conservation projects all over the island. The Jamaica Environment Trust recently had a significant victory with a declaration of boundaries for Cockpit Country, one of the island’s largest remaining forests, as well as a promise from the prime minister that no bauxite mining will be allowed there.
In December, the government also announced it would be converting Goat Islands, two islets connected by a mangrove area within the Portland Bight Protected Area on the south coast, into a biodiversity nature reserve. The islands had been threatened since a 2013 disclosure that Chinese Harbour Engineering Co. wanted to build a $1.5 billion deepwater port there, along with mainland infrastructure.
Holness said in an interview that protecting coastal environments—and in particular, reef systems—can offer long-term economic benefits beyond the fishing industry. “The coral nurseries and out-planting sites can also provide an attraction for tourists and potential income-generation and employment for local stakeholders as tour guides and coral gardeners,” he said.
A short turn at snorkeling around Oracabessa Bay revealed that Blackwell’s project seems to be working. A school of doctor fish and striped sergeant majors darted about, and although some reefs looked bleached, one was a rich, healthy red. Farther out is a coral nursery that the foundation is cultivating. It climbs upward, along trellises, from rods tethered to the sea floor; upside-down bottles just below the surface keep each rig floating.