Welcome

Welcome to the new blog for Maho Bay Camps in the US Virgin Islands. Our intention with this endeavor is to provide an informal setting for information on Maho happenings, Island happenings, Eco happenings, and any other happenings we can come up with. We hope you find this informative, entertaining, intriguing, inspiring, and any other adjective you can think of. Please bear with us as we build and develop this blog to its full potential. As a welcome gift, enjoy a Maho sunset on us.

Sahara Dust

This was originally written four years ago as a Maho Newsletter by Bob Carmody.

SAHARA DUST

A meteorology report from the Pennsylvania State University on July 30 this year stated that satellite pictures were showing a vast plume of dust spreading across the eastern tropical Atlantic. The brown swirls shown in the pictures were dust from the Sahara desert blowing over the Atlantic Ocean toward the Caribbean and the Americas. By the end of August, the dust had passed over the Virgin Islands.

This Sahara dust has a mixed impact: The dust is a boom for life in the ocean and for vegetation on land. It acts as kind of vitamin supplement to nutrient poor soils. It helps give us some of those extraordinary sunsets that you can often see from the Maho pavilion and the marvelous sunrises you can see from Concordia. It also gives some of those rare, overcast gray days; and it also gives us that gritty feeling underfoot particularly on the tile floors in the studios at Harmony and Concordia.

The dust was initially lofted into the atmosphere by currents of hot air rising from the floor of the Sahara Desert. It is common for weather disturbances to carry dust from the Sahara toward the Caribbean and the Americas. Research suggests that dust from Africa makes up at least half the particles in the air in the southeast United States

Giant sand storms — often larger than Spain — routinely blow all the way across the Atlantic, reaching South America, the Caribbean, and the southeastern United States. "There have been times when airports in the Caribbean have been closed down for lack of visibility from these dust storms," said Eugene Shinn, a senior geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It shows we're all linked together in one way or the other, that's for sure." It is a global phenomenon. Windstorms in China have darkened cities in Australia; dust from Mongolia has turned up in Denver. ‘You would be surprised, he said. "It's a complete chemical soup," said Shinn."It's full of living microbes, it has a little mercury in it, small bits of arsenic, you name it, and it’s in there."

Shinn and his colleagues surprised their fellow scientists two years ago, when they published a study showing that bacteria and fungi could survive transoceanic trips in the upper atmosphere. Apparently, they ride on grains of sand, carried by winds to altitudes of 10,000 feet or more where many scientists believed they would be killed off by the ultraviolet rays of the Sun.

Biologists suspect the dust may be responsible for damage to coral reefs off the coast of Florida; the coral has no immunity to diseases that settle in the water, carried from places thousands of miles away. Two Billion Tons a Year But the dust is also an essential part of life on Earth. Two billion tons of it routinely cross the oceans every year, so much that it's become part of nature's routine. "African dust blows over almost on a daily basis during our summer, falling in the Caribbean," says Dale Griffin, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "A good number of the plants in the upper canopy of the Amazon rainforest derive all their nutrients from African dust." As one scientist said, the whole planet is intermixing. If you see a truly spectacular sunset, you may be able to thank a distant desert.

(Thanks to the New York Times and ABC News Internet Ventures from whom we have borrowed heavily)

A moment with......

......New York Bob.




When asked, "What does Bob do?", it is a difficult question to answer. Not because he doesn't do much, but because he does too much. I have resorted to replying with "Maho Guru". I took a moment to do a brief interview with Bob who is here with us for budgets and other guru activities.

First visit to Maho: 1985

Employee/affiliated since: 1989

Biggest improvement to Maho over the years: Real mattresses instead of the original 4 inch foam pads as well as actual stairs leading to tent instead of nothing at all.

Vivid Memory: Hamilton's Island Tour as a guest way back when

Favorite Restaraunt Food: Once in the 80's I put my dinner order in at 4:30 and showed up at 6:30 to eat only to find out there was nothing left. (before we had the restaurant, dinner orders were placed, food cooked in town by a few fabulous West Indian cooks, and brought to Maho for dinner time)

Funny Memory: Back when the tents were green canvas with netting for an opening and goats roamed the area. One time I came home to A5 to find a goat inside my tent who was none to happy to be trapped inside. This particular goat had a torn right ear, probably from a previous fight with another goat. The intruder's name was Vincent Van Goat.

Interview with Stanley and Irma

A podcast interview with Stanley and Irma about Maho and their lives has been placed online. Listen to the Interview
Click Episode 3 of "Youthful Nature" to listen!

Beach Cleanup

In honor of Earth Day on April 22nd, Maho Bay Staff members cleaned up Big Maho Beach and Francis Beach. Between the two beaches we picked up 6 trash bags worth of garbage, including over 400 cigarette butts! We also found half a shoe, a few pirate toys, and part of a park bench. Friends of the Park asks organizations and businesses to sponsor beaches each year. For as long as we can remember, we have been sponsoring both Big Maho and Francis which we clean twice a year. As walked down the beach with our bags, several people asked us in disbelief, "Did all of that came from this beach?" Unfortunately, yes.

On a side note, someone pointed out today that we take dog droppings and place them in plastic bags.......seems a little odd......organic material being placed in plastic....... Maybe we could just start throwing it in the bushes. A fertilized plant is a happy plant.

March 23 Sunset

It's always nice to see the sun set into the water or behind St. Thomas. Sometimes though it is too cloudy. Those days aren't so bad either.....

Glass Blowing

We were recently informed that a video of our glass blowers was on YouTube. The glass they are using is recycled Corona and Carib bottles. The glass blowers are Jake and Greg.