Modeling on Eleuthera

In exchange for $15 worth of t-shirts and candy, four brave Williams students including yours truly jumped into the new beachside pool at Cape Eleuthera for a little launch photoshoot. Everyone was a little puzzled and scared when yelled at while biking to the beach. But instead of being kicked off the beach, we were asked to quickly strip down to our swimwear and start posing awkwardly by the pool. As you can see, we did a pretty good job despite having no makeup artist or lighting team. You can look for our photo at the Miami Boat Show and other destinations.

Eleuthera pix and update

I decided to take a very short break from skiing and head to the tropics for the first time in many winters/ springs. Along with a professor and eight other students from Williams College, I hopped on a plane to Charlotte to begin our taste of Southern hospitality, and then continued on to Nassau and then Rock Sound International Airport. We're just finishing the first week of our stay at the Island School/ Cape Eleuthera Institute campus, so I thought you might want a quick update.

Our objective for the project is to study local food production on the island of Eleuthera including farming and fishing and recommend ways to connect local producers to a changing market. Bahamians have a high incidence of cancer and diabetes, and current taxation and freight schemes make fresh foods difficult to afford, and fried goodness remains a big part of the culture. Affordable fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish in local markets will allow for a healthier diet and more cash staying in the local economy.

Take a look at the captions below for a few snippets of the trip so far.

We flew in on a Bahamasair flight to Rock Sound. From the plane, the air and water are so clear you can almost see the fish... and fish here are still to be seen, especially on the shallow sand banks and reefs. But their stocks are declining. 

The Island School has an amazing dock, with beautiful sunrises and a windmill for electricity. 

The land is nice, but not so nice as the sea. In south Eleuthera, it is mostly coral rock, with a bit of sand mixed in. The farm here belongs to Rodney, who is one of the only farmers working with rows and irrigation. 

Rodney gifted me a delicious papaya... for some reason it is hard to find these locally, though the trees are plentiful. Farmers often just feed the ripe papayas to the pigs. 

Here is a slightly more traditional farm, run by a Haitian named Joseph. It is slash-and-burn agriculture with some pothole farming mixed in. The field is good for a couple of years, but then the nutrients are gone. Most farmers have a similarly scattered field system of rocky soils without irrigation. 

Everyone grows tomatoes. These here are for Kathleen Culmer's restaurant in Rock Sound, Sammy's. They're bottled in some way and stored for the year, because pretty much everyone grows tomatoes at the same time. 

The dock here in Tarpum Bay is gorgeous. No wonder Princess Cruises takes their passengers here. But the fish really is local, and the fishermen really are nice. Most have been working the sea for generations with small boats, harvesting conch, grouper, lobster and other Bahamian specialties. Unfortunately, most stocks are declining, and we hope more fishermen can embrace lionfish (an invasive species that all say is delicious) or some deeper-water species inaccessible without larger boats.