Page 58 - Dreamscapes Magazine | Spring/Summer 2025

RESTORE AND
REJUVENATE
the Turks and Caicos Way
In the Turks and Caicos Islands, Ilona Kauremszky dives into the riches at
Ocean Club Resorts and discovers ecotourism and conservation are high priorities.
along only one of the most famous
As sunbathers are snagging sun time
beaches in the world, I’m hovering
over a fish tank on the other side
of Grace Bay Beach in the Turks and Caicos
Islands (TCI), watching an indoor aquatic
food show for no ordinary animal.
“See that,” motions Gracie Perry-Garnette,
armed with a turkey baster. The resident coral
aquarist at the Turks and Caicos Reef Fund
(TCRF) is gingerly basting clouds of nutrients to
a crop of corals as we watch wide gaping holes
emerging from them. “They’re mouths,” she
explains about the marine specimen so fragile,
it can be declared the unofficial national trea-
sure in these parts.
The Turks and Caicos Reef System is
prominent everywhere. As one of the largest
contiguous barrier reefs in the world, it is the
lifeline to this archipelago of islands that
includes Providenciales, the third largest of
the nine inhabited ones. Providenciales or
“Provo” is part of the Caicos Bank, a massive
underwater plateau, and Grace Bay Beach, the
gem in this crown.
In 2019 an invasive disease called Stony
Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) was first
detected in the Turks and Caicos Islands,
threatening hard or stony corals and putting
species like pillar corals at high risk. “We are
not finding pillar coral babies,” Gracie notes
about the coral loss as her inked forearm of a
sea turtle suspends over the tank of itty-bitty
corals, while the turkey baster blows over top
of them.
58
DREAMSCAPES SPRING/SUMMER 2025