Understanding Stingrays Part III:Stingrays and us-living on the wild side

Published: September 28, 2006

Understanding Stingrays Part III: Stingrays and us - living on the wild side

sting ray

It might surprise readers to see that after the previous two articles there is even more to be said about stingrays - but what else is there to know? Mainly, that stingrays can be dangerous to divers or swimmers, although there are ways to minimize this risk or danger. People can inadvertently increase the risk by habituating stingrays to the presence of people. From both an ecological and environmental perspective it is never a good idea to feed wild animals – period. Stingrays are graceful, powerful, and take a long time to grow to their full size and role within the environment. Stingrays don’t reproduce all that fast. Hopefully people motivated by the shock of Steve Irwin’s recent death learned even more information about stingrays.

There is a bigger message that should be contemplated in The Bahamas – and that is the issue of how we live with the wilderness around us. The history and culture of the country is built on learning to survive in the wilderness – Bahamians had to learn to live out on the islands. Many people from the completely different environment of West Africa had to relearn what to avoid and what was safe. People wanted to remove the wilderness from their immediate surroundings, tame the wild and make their settlements and villages safe. Bahamians are now long past surviving, and there are certainly new dangers in our settlements and cities. Most of the country is thriving, and there is very little threat from the natural variety of wild things around us. In fact, most of the wilderness is fast disappearing. The Bahamas is being deforested about ten times as fast as Amazonia. The standard operating procedure is “clear and burn” to get rid of nature.

All of the discussions now going on about “sustainable development” for the islands are fundamentally about human needs, with no concern for ecosystem function or living with the wilderness. The Bahamas has its own special type of wilderness and the rays of all types are just one small part of it. We need to learn to let the wilderness and the stingrays do their job in the environment. We need to need to learn to live on the wild side with our wilderness – just that bit of danger can keep us humble and respectful of our limitations. Nothing can take your breathe away or inspire your faith in the creator faster than a bona fide experience with wilderness – above or below the water. Real wilderness is not habituated, sometimes harder to get to, and always requires patience to wait and watch.

Like so much else in our society, mass communications have sought to capture, bottle and package the wilderness experience for us. Mr. Irwin was trying to capture this excitement as he experienced it on film for his television audience. His success was to a large extent based on how well that contagious excitement and enthusiasm “in the wild” came across on TV. His greatest gift to his children may have been the wilderness experiences they had traveling with their father. Living on the wild side, versus seeing it on television, are definitely NOT the same thing

Stephen M. Meyer, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently wrote a book about man’s inability to tolerate and exist with wilderness. His book, The End of the Wild, tells about how man is selectively altering the environments around the world and bringing about a collapse of biological diversity. Meyer predicts that in the century ahead, over half of the world’s species will disappear, and there will be no wilderness as our grandparents knew it to be. Meyer speaks to man’s overall intolerance for the environment, and the changes brought about which make a new environment more suited to weedy and invasive species.

Meyer’s vision of the world is becoming a reality here – Nassau Harbour is a vacuum of biological variety, dominated by a few species of weedy algae. On land, nature is losing its unique Bahamian flavor to be dominated by the introduced ring-neck doves and jumbay. The next time you can’t find a show to watch on TV, try getting away from people and looking for some wilderness. After you adjust to the quiet, wait, look and listen to catch the best show around while it is still playing.

- Submitted by Kathleen Sullivan-Sealey



Join GB Info Mailing List! Email:

The author of this article is responsible for the content of the article. Reprinted by permission