May 21, 2006 – You could spend a few thousand dollars, fly for 15 hours or more, hire a boat and explore the fabled Galapagos Islands off Ecuador. Or you could just take a few minutes and drive to the East End of St. Thomas to the Mangrove Lagoon.
Sybille Sorrentino, owner of Virgin Islands Ecotours, says we have a "mini-Galapagos" right in our own backyard.
"I visited the Galapagos," says Sorrentino, "and while I was enchanted by its magic, I was astonished to see that much of the beauty – the flora and fauna and marine life – though on a much smaller scale, we have right here at home.
"It was all right here," she says, "but it just hadn't been interpreted and identified in a way to attract ecotourism here like they do in the Galapagos."
The Mangrove Lagoon Wildlife & Marine Preserve is a delicate ecological treasure, Sorrentino stresses. It was protected as a sanctuary by the V.I. Park Service in 1994.
Capitalizing on her thoughts from the Galapagos experience, after a brief teaching experience, Sorrentino started a boat and snorkel tour out of Compass Point, targeting the cruise ship market.
"I had taught a class for severely and profoundly handicapped kids for a year at the Peace Corps School, and I enjoyed doing that," Sorrentino says. "But I'm a business person. So, I decided the next year I'd try something different."
Instead, Sorrentino decided to start a snorkel and kayak business out of Compass Point.
"Everybody said I couldn't do it," she says, "but it started to work out. Then, when I bought Ecotours, I merged the two businesses."
"Ecotours was founded 10 years ago by Frannie Newbold and Joyce Bailey," Sorrentino says. "I purchased it three years ago." She says couldn't be happier with what she is doing. "It was set up so well, so well run, so well organized."
She says she inherited some remarkable employees in the bargain. Marques Hall, a 24-year-old University of the Virgin Islands student, is lead tour guide. Hall is intimate with all the plant and marine life on Cas Cay, a 15-acre wildlife preserve, included in the kayaking tour.
"I love what I do," says Hall, before departing on our morning excursion. "I love the world, I love the earth and teaching conservation to people on a daily basis. It opens their eyes to the importance of protecting these areas."
Hall pockets a small group of adventurers into a few kayaks and we are off. The water, murky at the dock, suddenly becomes crystal clear about 100 yards out. "This is the most startling thing," he says, "the drastic change in water clarity. People who have lived here almost always think of the lagoon as filled with nasty water. It's not."
Indeed the clear water sparkles with life. Hall says the murky water is from runoff from development on the surrounding hillsides. "It affects our quality of life," he say, "and that's where the mangroves come in."
"They save our lives," he says, "the runoff would kill the reef, the sea life. The mangroves are the protector of our whole system. Without them, we wouldn't have this sanctuary."
We pull up the kayaks and leave them on the shore of Cas Cay for a hike. "This is purslane," Hall says, pointing out the bright green ground cover. "Taste a leaf."
Although it is strictly forbidden to take even a grain of sand from the protected land, he says the purslane is plentiful enough to provide a leaf or two. It is delicious, salty.
Hall takes us through mangrove forests, stepping over hermit crabs, stopping to examine a poisonous manchineel tree. "Beware of these," he cautions. "Their fruit can kill you. Don't even touch the leaves."
He introduces us to the four species of mangrove that grow on the cay – red, by the water line; and in the interior, black, white and buttonwood, so named for its little berries that resemble buttons. Botany is second nature to Hall.
He points out the volcanic cliffs surrounding us. "You can't go up there, it's too steep," he cautions, but he scrambles up, himself, to bring back a sprig of delicate white plumeria, wild frangipani. "It's known as the lei flower in Hawaii," he says. "Smell it, it's like an aphrodisiac," he smiles, "it's so sweet."
It's time for a snorkel.
"See the reef outside of the lagoon?" Hall says. "That's called False Entrance because from the sea, you can't see it, and boats have run up on it for years. It's great snorkeling here."
Following Hall, we soon come upon an octopus unsuccessfully hiding in a bed of coral, and then the sight of the morning – a spotted eagle ray. "This is great, really unusual," he yells back holding snorkel in hand.
Then he guides us to see the small fish in the mangrove roots. "All types of small fish incubate here until they get big enough to fend for themselves," Hall explains.
Longtime resident Jan Swenson and former resident Margo Rome were overwhelmed. Swenson says, "I've always been aware of the lagoon, but I didn't realize it was so vast, so beautiful and clear." Rome agrees: "I never did this when I lived here. Just look at all the birds, the pelicans. It's amazing."
And we do see birds, birds, birds. Pelicans gaze sedately down at us from perches in the mangrove branches. Pintail ducks swim about, along with herons and egrets.
We pull in to the shore, reluctantly after a three-hour excursion. Sorrentino, 44, blond and tanned, who looks about half her age, greets us. "Did you learn a lot?" Silly question, we agree. We are mangrove experts now.
Along with running her business, she is bringing up two children, Diana, 13, and Luke, 10.
Sorrentino says water has always been in her veins but getting to the kayak tours took a circuitous route. "I graduated from George Washington University in 1985," she says, "and I majored in international economics, which has no bearing on anything. All during school I taught sailing in the summer. I taught here at Sapphire one summer. I used to race sailboats in Annapolis with my dad."
"I've always traveled on my own," Sorrentino says. "Right after graduation, I headed for the V.I. I knew where I wanted to be, and I don't like cold weather."
However, she didn't wind up on the water. "The first year I got a job at West Indies Corp. as a wine rep," she says, "and then I moved to Tortola and started my own wholesale and retail wine company."
Sorrentino was in the wine business for 17 years, but with children she had to move back to St. Thomas. "I had a little boy with Down's Syndrome who needed open heart surgery. There were no services for his special needs on Tortola. Luckily, someone bought my company from me, so I could move back here and just be a mom for a while."
Sorrentino doesn't take her business lightly. She has traveled the Caribbean and even Alaska looking over other kayak operations.
"You'd be amazed," she says. "We are the only one who gives guests a briefing beforehand and who requires they wear life vests. In Ketchikan [Alaska] they just give you a waiver to sign and then herd you out in the water. In St. Martin they had two guides for 40 people. They take you to a big lagoon and leave you on the beach."
Sorrentino employs about 20 guides, some part time. "It's one guide for every eight guests," she says. "Sometimes we don't know until the last minute how many will be in a group, and we have to call them in. We have one chemistry professor; a 20-year-old Ivanna Eudora Kean graduate, Craig Marik; and a 70-year-old lady, Jeannie Kuich, who always wears a hibiscus. She weighs about 90 pounds. She's fantastic."
Sorre
ntino says, "We do a lot of youth groups in the summer, at special rates. I want people to come and see how beautiful our lagoon is. We take our permit to interpret this area very seriously.
"Our goal," she says, "is that through the process of having a good time paddling, people will learn the importance of maintaining this delicate and complex ecosystem."
For more information, visit their Web site.
Back Talk
Share your reaction to this news with other Source readers. Please include headline, your name and city and state/country or island where you reside.
