Out of Place: Breaching The Bahamas

The Bahamas are known as one of the most beautiful places in the world. Stunning beaches, clear waters, and incredible marine life including Dolphins, Sharks and coral reefs. Unfortunately, The Bahamas are under threat from a variety of human-caused issues. In this article, we’ll explore the two major ones: plastic pollution, and the Lionfish. 

Plastic Pollution

Plastic is a staple of the industrial age. Most of the time, we use plastics without even realizing it–it’s in the shoes and clothing we wear, the devices we use, covering (and sometimes in) the food we eat, as well as countless other places. 

Plastic takes thousands of years to biodegrade, and therefore ends up in our landfills, oceans and rivers. The Bahamas is one place where the problem is unignorable. Once known for its pristine, “untouched” beaches and waters, The Bahamas today has a serious plastic problem. 

As an island, The Bahamas is subject to plastic debris washing in from the Atlantic. But additionally, the island itself lacks recycling facilities and public waste management infrastructure. The problem forces many people in The Bahamas to burn their trash, which is not a good solution either, as this process emits poisonous fumes and greenhouse gasses. Additionally, tourists litter the island, the litter simply builds up.

Images I captured of plastic pollution in The Bahamas in 2023

In 2020, The Bahamas banned single-use plastics, including polystyrene cups, polystyrene plates and food ware, plastic knives, forks, spoons, and straws. 

Additionally, in 2013, Kristal Ambrose (also known as Kristal Ocean), an environmental scientist studying marine debris and plastic pollution in The Bahamas, founded The Bahamas Plastic Movement. The nonprofit facilitates a range of programming including a free summer program that educates students about the plastic problem, and organized plastic clean-up initiatives and plastic recycling projects, as well as research, citizen science, and pushing for policy change. 

Removing plastic from our world altogether is, at this point, near impossible, and would be extremely costly. But laws like the ones brought in The Bahamas, and projects like The Bahamas Plastic Movement, are a way forward. 

Lionfish 

In addition to the immense issues human plastic trash brings to The Bahamas, there are also conservation issues created by humans. Marine life there is threatened by an invasive species called Lionfish, which first came to the Americas via boats from South East Asia during the early 1980s. 

Lionfish are striking in their appearance, and so originally, they were brought over to populate aquariums and for people to have as pets in tanks at home. However, over the years, many either escaped or were let go. They are now found all over the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and up and down the east coast of the United States. It is estimated that there is at least one Lionfish for every 60 square feet of water throughout the east coast and the Caribbean. 

Lionfish can live at a wide variety of depths and temperatures. They also have no natural predators. In addition, they are venomous, and they eat native species, causing huge damage to the biodiversity and depleting native fish populations in the areas they now live. This in turn damages fishing industries and tourism, as well as environments and ecosystems that rely on the equilibrium that native species support.

Lionfish eat pretty much every species of smaller fish that live around them, and in huge quantities. They can expand their stomachs to 30x their original size in order to consume larger prey and larger amounts of prey. This includes fish vital for the maintenance of ecosystems, for example, grazing fish that eat algae on coral reefs. Without these grazing fish, the coral reefs become overrun with algae. Disease follows, and the coral reefs die. Lionfish also eat fish which usually consume parasites. Without these fish, the parasites thrive. Additionally, larger fish such as groupers and snappers face starvation due to dwindling food supply at the hands of the Lionfish. The Nassau grouper, an endangered species of grouper native to The Bahamas, is also at risk of extinction because of the impact Lionfish have on the entire food chain. 

And let’s not also forget that Lionfish have venomous spines that cause painful stings to humans! 

Credit: Kate Francis

Targeted fishing expeditions attempt to reduce the population of Lionfish.

There have also been efforts by some divers and marine enthusiasts to “tame the Lionfish invasion and try to create at least an artificial predator for the species, by training Sharks, Groupers and Moray Eels to eat Lionfish on sight.” 

A group called Robots in Service of the Environment are also working on another, more high-tech solution: a lionfish-hunting robot called Guardian LF1.

The Guardian LF1:
1. Probes send out an electric current to shock the fish.

2. Lionfish are sucked into the robot’s main chamber.

3. A camera allows the operator to see underwater.

Unfortunately, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to completely eliminate lionfish from the Western Atlantic. The objective now is to minimize their impact. 

Lionfish are another demonstration of the way human activity has irreparably damaged natural habitats, ecosystems, environments, and species. We would do well to learn from these lessons moving forward.