“They don’t have to worry about the next meal because their trust fund is good, and them spend their time surfing,” the Prime Minister of the tiny southern Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago said in June about a group of surfers fighting to protect a precious right point break on the island of Tobago. “And if the hotel is built at Rocky Point it would affect the waves in the sea, so they wouldn’t enjoy the surfing, and they go and smoke marijuana there and ‘meditate to your God’” he continued.
The surfing that is said to be affected is a warm water right point that breaks over a pristine reef, home to the biggest turtle nesting site in the country and surrounded by rainforest. On the waters edges are indigenous burial sites and the ruins of a Latvian fort that has stood since eastern Europeans colonized the island in the 1600s. The proposed hotel development is seeking to tear it all down and replace it with a large luxury Marriott.
Trinidad and Tobago is made up of two islands – Trinidad and Tobago. Tobago is the smaller of the pair, with a surface area of just 300km2 and sits just north of the coast of Venezuela. Rocky Point is a wedge of land that juts out into the shimmering blue Caribbean Sea on the west coast and is hugged by a reef called Mt. Irvine. This coral structure is home to a large food source on the island, a fishing spot that local fishermen depend on to survive. When winter swells pulse down from the North Atlantic the reef shudders into life – a right hander appears from the depths and reels off down the bay. Surfers fly in by the dozens from other islands in the Caribbean and a cluster of die hard Brits rush to board flights from Cornwall and touch down in warmer waters.