The No Man's Land challenge

Along with the environmental challenges facing the reefs at Buccoo Marine Park and the long-running effort to preserve the ecological balance at No Man's Land, an incident on October 5 stands as a stark reminder that respect for the fragile ecosystem must be more effectively enforced if this Tobago treasure is to remain as attractive as it is.

A video of a party boat offshore at No Man's Land showed the vessel first having trouble, then passengers were urged to disembark before the boat finally sank in the shallow waters off the spit of land.

While the popular spot is an important feature of the island's tourism economy and reef operators depend on both the Buccoo Reef and No Man's Land as parts of their tour circuit, clearer rules and improved oversight of the natural resource seem sensible.

Access to the secluded spot requires permission by land; it is the seafront of Angostura's Golden Grove Estate, but most visitors arrive by boat. The stretch of pristine beach extends from Buccoo Beach and encloses the Bon Accord Lagoon, a unique meeting of freshwater and saltwater.

It is a Ramsar site on the list of Wetlands of International Importance along with the much larger Caroni and Nariva swamps.

Since the 1990s it has become a key destination for the glass-bottomed boats that tour the reef and often hosts barbeques and other festivities. But No Man's Land is a delicate ecology that is being slowly degraded by continuous visitors and a hands-off approach to its development.

Use of the beach is governed only by a gentleman's agreement between the visitors on any given day and their commitment to be sanitary with no restrooms there and to be tidy with their garbage.

That sense of a shared investment in a valued public resource has been shaken recently by the August 2024 stabbing of the co-captain of the Millennium One glass-bottom boat at No Man's Land and, more recently, a bloody July brawl on the Cool Runnings boat that spilled ashore when the vessel reached the beach terrorising everyone there.

Reef tour operators concerned for the safety of their clients, many of them families on vacation, have begun to drop the destination from their itineraries.

Unlike coral bleaching, lionfish invasions, and sargassum drifts, a code of practice among reef tour operators is well within the scope of the THA to enforce.

If the sanctity of the location, peaceful despite proximity to Tobago's ever-increasing island pace, is to be preserved, collaboration among all its stakeholders – the marine experts who study it, the tour operators who use it, and the visitors who enjoy it – must craft a gentler touch, with an eye on conservation and sustainable use of its fragile ecology.