Remembering the manatees through art

The ghostly shapes of two manatees took up the bulk of the metre-square canvas, a lack of hard outlines representing the marine mammals’ fading presence in the Virgin Islands.

The ethereal depiction was deliberate, according to artist Christine Taylor.

“The reason I did not outline them very hard was because I wanted to get a general, soft image, because we’ve lost [manatees] from our BVI waters,” she explained.

Ms. Taylor’s latest work was unveiled at Bamboushay Restaurant & Lounge last week near another mural she painted previously depicting the wreck of the Rhone.

Bamboushay owner Eldred Williams, who commissioned both artworks, hosted the ecologically focused unveiling on Friday evening after the Virgin Islands Cultural Food Fair, Book and Art Expo ended around 4 p.m. at the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park.

What’s in a name?

During the launch, Junior Minister of Culture and Tourism Luce Hodge-Smith told attendees that manatees — which are also known as sea cows — have a deeper connection to the VI than some people realise.

In fact, she said, both Sea Cows Bay and Fat Hogs Bay are named for the mammals, which used to be relatively common along Virgin Islands coastlines.

“I know it as a ‘sea cow,’ because back in the day that’s the name I learned from Sea Cows Bay: named from the sea cows that they thought were in the area,” she said.

As for Fat Hogs Bay, the junior minister hinted at some of the history that VI Studies Institute Director Bernadine Louis would be presenting later.

“[Ms. Louis] said that Fat Hogs Bay is named after the manatee as well, because the people in that area thought it was a fat hog in the water,” Ms. Hodge-Smith said.

Habitat destroyed

Today, however, manatees are extremely rare in the territory.

“[Manatees] are no longer in the [VI] because of development,” Ms. Louis said during her presentation later in the evening. “[Manatees] would be in the mangroves around the territory, and we have destroyed a lot of the mangroves, and we have done a lot of development on these marinas along the coast.”

Though the mammals occasionally make the 60-plus-mile trek from Puerto Rico, they rarely stick around. And sometimes, they need help to get back to more habitable waters.

During a presentation before the painting was unveiled, Association of Reef Keepers Managing Director Shannon Gore explained that people have been hunting the mammals for sustenance for more than two centuries, but reliable data on manatees in the VI wouldn’t come until much later.

“It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that there was official documentation showing there had been three [manatee sightings] in the BVI,” said the scientist, who holds a doctorate in biology. “In late 2002, the Conservation and Fisheries Department started getting a lot of phone calls about ‘this weird looking sea slug’ or ‘this whale without fins.’ And there was actually somebody that said, ‘It was a mermaid that got hit with the ugly stick.’”

In early 2003, Ms. Gore and her team were finally able to pinpoint the mammal’s location.

“There were a consistent number of phone calls that were saying that [the manatee] was in Gun Creek,” she said. “So we were like, ‘Okay, we’re going to go up there; we’re going to go look for it. And we found this needle in a haystack.”

Rescue operation

As she spoke, Ms. Gore clicked through slides to illustrate her story of the manatee that would later be named “Ochi.”

Ochi was so starved that he was about half the size of a normal Caribbean manatee of his age, and Ms. Gore’s team was forced to launch a major rescue attempt to return him to his natural habitat.

To that end, he was successfully transported via aircraft back to Puerto Rico, where he ended up in a private zoo.

There, however, he eventually succumbed to health conditions caused by his journey to the less habitable VI, dying of pneumonia and long-term dehydration and starvation, according to Ms. Gore.

Ochi couldn’t survive in the modern-day VI because of human development, the marine scientist stated.

Look and see

Also at the Friday ceremony was Culture Director Katherine Smith, who praised the restaurant owner for commissioning a mural highlighting the territory’s history.

“[Mr. Williams] has a real honour and respect for maritime and marine heritage,” she said shortly before the painting was unveiled. “You can see it in the back-of-the-room mural. And now they’re going to unveil yet another art piece that’s reminiscent of our marine heritage: the manatee.”

Mr. Williams’ use of local artists, Ms. Smith said, is a good example of blending tourism and historically focused artwork.

“Arts tourism: You saw all of it there at the food fair,” she said of the cultural event she attended earlier in the day in the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park. “Here [at Bamboushay], we have a mural. And this is a business that does very well.”

People’s patron

Mr. Williams originally commissioned the Rhone mural around five years ago, he said, adding that it was touched up before the Friday unveiling.

Asked about the vision he shares with Ms. Taylor, the restaurateur explained the environmental loss he has witnessed during his lifetime in the VI.

In the area that is now Maria’s by the Sea, he remembered, there used to be coral reefs teeming with fish.

“Now, we snorkel there, it’s hardly anything,” Mr. Williams said. “So when I think of how we are destroying our reef, think of the manatees — we all have to do our part.”