Yacht belonging to Microsoft's Paul Allen destroys 14,000 sq ft of protected coral reef in Caymans

[Miles Archer]

Microsoft Tycoon's Yacht Blamed In Reef Damage

The vessel's anchor chain raked almost 14,000 sq ft of protected coral at a Cayman Islands dive site, say environmental officials.



http://news.sky.com/story/1631659/microsoft-tycoons-yacht-blamed-in-reef-damage

A super yacht belonging to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has caused serious damage to protected coral reef in the Cayman Islands, according to officials.

The vessel's anchor chain destroyed almost 14,000 sq ft of protected reef, amounting to more than 80% of the coral at the site, the islands' Department of Environment told the Cayman News Service.

The tech tycoon was not aboard the 300ft (95 metre) vessel, The Tatoosh, at the time, said Cayman officials.

Ironically, Mr Allen, who has a $18.1bn (£12.6bn) fortune, runs a charitable foundation that works to protect oceans.

[valerief]

1. It's sad he had to ruin the ocean while visiting his money. nt

[A HERETIC I AM]

8. "Ruin the ocean"?!?

All of it?

A little hyperbole never hurt anyone, eh?

[In_The_Wind]

2. That was totally irresponsible.

A yacht of that size should have more than one mooring anchor.

[joeybee12]

3. And all his money is't going to get that coral back

A88hole

[MuseRider]

4. Some of the diving there is just

exquisite. How could they have let this happen? Those reefs have been protected for years and are a large source of income for those who are not bankers on Grand Cayman anyway.

I am relieved to see that it was not Bloody Bay wall. Still, this is horrible.

Why does anyone need a yacht this big, let alone 2 of them?

[Divernan]

6. Bloody Bay Wall is at Little Cayman, not Grand Cayman

Last edited Fri Jan 29, 2016, 06:19 PM - Edit history (1)

I was just checking a map of dive sites. The article refers to dive sites on the west side of Grand Cayman - so that would be off of Seven Mile Beach, and NOT, to my great relief, in the area of Tarpon Alley, where I had one of the best dives of my life while qualifying on an underwater propulsion vehicle.

I've seen these luxury yachts of the rich and famous berthed one next to the other in a long row at St. Barth's. Each had it's own elegantly and distinctively uniformed crew of 25-30. I was on a relatively modest little live aboard trimaran/diveboat and I rode in on our Zodiac inflatable with our ship's captain to present our papers to the harbor master for the 2 nights we'd be anchored there. The super yachts were described as being very popular with South American drug lords and their mistresses. We were anchored off of Nevis another night on this dive trip, and another diver and I had gone ashore to shop for souvenir tshirts at the Four Seasons Resort there. Some mixup with the little 4 man crew of our diveboat meant no one showed up to pick us up at the dock, as night was falling. In the tradition of the sea, the crew member of a super yacht, there to pick up his owner in the yacht's tender, came to our aid, and got permission from said owner to drop us off at our sailboat. The owner looked down his nose at us, nodded permission and said not a word to us.

Here's a link to a super yacht description (85 metres long). Hey, if you hurry, there's a rental discount - only $750,000 U.S. per week, if booked by Jan. 31st. Allen's yacht , the Tatoosh, is 300 feet (95 metres) long and is among the world's largest super yachts. Fitted with a swimming pool, cinema, basketball court, recording studio and two helicopter pads, it can hold up to 20 guests and 30 crew. But 63-year-old Mr Allen's other yacht, the Octopus, is even bigger - at 414ft long.

http://www.charterworld.com/index.html?sub=yacht-charter&charter=motor-yacht-nicki-6237


Motor Yacht SOLANDGE (Project NIKI) - a Lurssen Superyacht
Yacht Charter Description
The magnificent 2013 five deck Lurssen yacht SOLANDGE (Project NIKI (NICKI)) has a timeless Espen Oeino exterior superyacht design and interior design by Aileen Rodriguez. Along with her sister-ship, called ACE (ex project ROCKY), the famed German yacht builder Lurssen was responsible for building this impressive motor yacht Solandge. Her length is 85 metres and she has an Espen Oeino exterior design which is characterised by sweeping forms, curves and lines. M/Y Solandge has a steel hull and an aluminium superstructure, as is usual for most boats of this size and type. The SOLANDGE yacht also has magnificent interior communal entertainment spaces and expansive exterior areas, making her very well suited as a luxury charter yacht. Superyacht SOLANDGE is available for luxury yacht charters in the Caribbean during the winter and in the Mediterranean during the summer months.

Charter guests aboard are greeted by the very elegant main saloon, boasting two magnificent walls of back-lit amethyst, which is the first thing to notice and feel. There is a Bechstein piano on the port side and a beautiful Venetian console and mirror on the starboard side. The interior of the ultra-luxurious yacht SOLANDGE exudes elegance, luxury and opulence, as you walk through the beautiful wooden floors with borders of honey onyx stone and gold leaf ceilings with Schonbeck chandeliers dripping with amethyst rose quartz crystals.

From main saloon, continuing through to the main lobby, guest will find the main feature aboard this magnificent yacht: The Tree of Life. This is represented by a lighted sculpture which is 50’ high and has more than 1200 points of light. This impressive sculpture was designed to fulfil the wishes of the owner, who always had envisioned something running the entire hight of the vessel from the tank deck to the bridge deck. Following many design trials with Rodriguez Interiors, they have decided on this stunning art glass sculpture.

Mega yacht SOLANDGE can accommodate up to 12 charter guests in 8 magnificent cabins. She also has a large individualised owners' deck and suite. Superyacht Solandge (Project NIKI) is easily able to accommodate a large gathering of guests for entertainment and parties as well as sleeping overnight in ensuite cabins in style and comfort. The vessel's numerous crew of 29 sleep in 15 crew cabins.

All guest cabins are situated on the main deck, all boasting traditional design with clean backdrop in the lines of the design but the wood veneers used give them a classical twist. Each cabin has been designed the same with beautiful mother of pearl inlays in the pertaining colour way. The guest companionway is very unique, as it was designed for guests to enjoy without the need to call the crew if they would like a late night drink or a snack. There are four drawer refrigerators, an ice maker and storage area for the guests to help themselves. There is also a Nespresso machine and a kettle. This area also features a guest office, which can be converted into a cabin when needed.

The Owner’s deck boasts the Owner’s Suite, which includes a private office, his dressing room and bathroom, her dressing room and bathroom and the stateroom which overlooks the bow of the boat and has its own private Spa Pool. The Owner’s suite is characterised by distinctive handmade Italian furnishings, including a private dining area, a desk area for her with a leather inlayed top and a custom chest of drawers. The owners’ lounge is more relaxed and casual than the main saloon.

Walking up the SOLANDGE superyacht from deck to deck, the spaces become more casual, reaching the Sun Deck where the designers have created a beach club feeling in ’Nikki Beach’ style. This area includes a bar clad in gold and white Bisazza tiles surrounded by 14 bar stools covered in gold leather flanked by two TVs. There is also a Spa Pool with a clear dance floor that lays on top for parties that can be hosted by anyone using the DJ console and booth. The Owner wished for every inch of SOLANDGE to feel special and have a meaning.

Solandge yacht features very large tender garage doors which are located to aft on her lower deck. She also has another doorway which could be used as a tender docking area in her hull and also as a beach swim platform.

Luxury yacht SOLANDGE was designed to offer many places for her guests to socialise or relax in privacy. Each deck has its own distinctive function with all the necessary furniture and amenities, such as built-in bars, buffets, dining areas, a pool and two hot tubs. There is a fantastic exterior cinema and a nightclub with a DJ station on the top deck. There is also an indoor/outdoor gymnasium, a covered main-deck reception area aft and a private outdoor seating area in front of the owner’s suite. SOLANDGE also has a large yacht tender garage, a full dive centre and a sauna, which is located aft with an access to the beach platform.

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. Disgusting displays.

[MuseRider]

11. Thanks for the description.

Disgusting that anyone would feel the need to own something like that or even simply to want something like that.

I knew about Bloody Bay because I have been diving there several times. There is nothing in my experience that tops the feeling of floating over the edge of it and looking into 6000 feet of darkness. My Supergirl experience. I found it hard to stay at depth there wanting always to go down to the things I could see through the clear water.

The thought of any reef being destroyed just makes me so angry. After spending so many hours under the surface and just above the reef (diving joke with our group) I miss it. Now I am certain wherever I went it would look so much different it would just be sad. We used to collect our findings for various organizations.

Anyway, thanks for these descriptions. We continue to create destruction with our need to have the best and the most toys.

[Divernan]

12. I regret I never got to dive the wall at Bloody Bay

I did get to peer into The Deep, i.e., The Abyss in the Bahamas.
"One of the most dramatic features on New Providence Island is the Tongue-Of-The-Ocean which is a deep oceanic trench that is 120 miles long, and 24 miles wide, with depths reaching 6,000 feet. The Tongue spans the gap between New Providence and Andros Island and comes to with-in a half a mile of shore on the southwest side of New Providence. Imagine the Grand Canyon, filled with water, and within a 1/2 mile of a pristine beach.

Besides creating dramatic visual sights, the Tongue-Of-The-Ocean also creates a unique marine environment. The deep waters bring large pelagic marine life close to shore. Nutrients from the deep well-up through the colder deep waters to the shallower warm waters creating nutrient rich waters in the shallows."

My favorite dive trip was wreck diving on the Japanese, WW II merchant marine ships in Truk Lagoon, Micronesia. And speaking of the deep, I was diving off of Saba in the Dutch West Indies, when a newly certified diver got rapture of the deep and took off toward the depths. Our dive master finally caught up with her at about 180 feet. Glad we had a doctor among our divers to keep an eye on the two of them later. Plus Saba has a medical school complete with hyperbaric chamber if necessary.

The 2 dive shops which organized the trips I went on both went out of business and my dive buddy retired to Florida - I have to face that my diving days are over - but oh, what fantastic experiences, and what a magnificent underwater world I was privileged to visit. Only another diver can appreciate the experience - and on those rare occasions I run into one, we have such a great time swapping dive stories.

[MuseRider]

14. Funny, I always wondered about your name!

Bloody Bay was something else to be sure! BIG pelagics, Tarpon and large Barracuda were cool and a few sharks but nothing remarkable about them as they are just everywhere.

There was a group of us, usually 8, who would arrange and go on trips every year. We had a blast and it was the highlight of my life. I too am most likely never going to dive again and honestly that makes me so very sad.

I have been all over the Caribbean, areas not totals of islands, with Tortola BVI being the best place on the planet in my opinion for many reasons, but mostly the diving. My only real incredible stories are about the grouper spawning we dove in off Guanaja, Honduras for 3 years with the International president of the Explorers Club. We happened on it, and him, by accident. I can't remember his name but I have pictures of us all on the boat that took us out there grinning under the Explorers flag. It was open ocean diving, way out past the reef and HARD diving (I like bathtub dives best) you got in and dropped as fast as you could because of the current and wave action on the top. You had to hold on to rocks at the bottom because your feet would flap behind you and you did not want to get caught in the current. It was dense, you had to part the grouper with one hand to see ahead of yourself. Of course the first thing you saw as you went to the bottom (it was only about 90 feet) were bull sharks and white tips cruising over the top of the spawning group. They were well fed so there were no worries but they were pretty good size and it was always a little creepy. It was an up and down and we had to float on the surface for the longest time while the boat found us all. I look back at that and wonder where my brains were but it was incredible. I then turned down the chance to go to the Blue Hole. We were in Belize on a little island. We got to the hole in the boat and I was tired so I just looked at it from the boat. Apparently it was not that great. We had done a deep dive in preparation a couple of days before, 135 feet and I found it dark and pretty colorless although the big fish were pretty cool. The other story is silly. I was attacked by 2 remoras in Tortola. My kids were down with us and we were with someone from the dive shop who wanted to go diving so we went as a group of 5. They tore up one of my hands, you could see the mark of a round, spiky scar for a while but it is gone now. They slammed me, knocked my mask almost all the way off. It was quite odd. Everyone else was just watching, lol. Mostly my diving was just mind blowing. I could find mind blowing in 20 feet as long as I could get down and stay down. Snorkeling is fun but it is NOT diving.

Truk!!! WOW!!! That was a place I always thought we would make it to. We did not. I bet that was incredible. One day you must tell me more about that. How incredible that must be.

My husband was bad at 90 feet, I had to watch him like a hawk or he would just go down more and more or swim off from the group. I bought him a dive computer when the first one's came out. He used to scare me to death.

Talk to me any time about diving. It makes me so sad to think I will never meet my friends, "above the reef" again. <----that was a slogan I learned taking a Zen diving course in Bonaire. We adapted it as our group motto.

[Divernan]

15. LOVE Tortola - made 3 dive trips on the Cuan Law based there.

I'm a long time Pittsburgher, and we had booked our trip 6 months in advance, without a thought as to the Super Bowl. So the Steelers played in (and won) the Superbowl, and we took the Zodiac in from our liveaboard trimaran to a joint called Fat Hog Bob's on Tortola to watch the game. I had my terrible towel and Troy Polamalu jersey. Lots more fun than watching the game in my living room. Check out the Cuan Law, based in Road Town. Most of their trips are around the BVI, but sometimes they'll schedule a 10 day trip from St. Martin's down through the Leeward Islands - Saba, Montserrat, Statia, St. Kitt's, St. Barth's & Nevis. The ship would sail from one island to the next overnight, and you could stretch out on the teak deck under the stars and listen to the wind in the canvas. Absolute heaven.

http://www.cuanlaw.com/

What a terrific experience to dive with the Explorers Club president. About a decade ago, I went to a lecture at the Philadelphia chapter of the Explorers Club - it was by a man from the Shark Research Institute on a study of great white sharks off the coast of South Africa. Wonderful videos and photos. An audience question was whether the great white was the most dangerous to divers. He ranked them as Bull Shark, most dangerous because of its really high testosterone level - always ready to attack; then the Tiger Shark - which he described as the garbage disposal of the seas - it would attack anything (remember the scene in Jaws where they cut open a tiger shark and a license plate spills out?) and then third was the Great White (although he noted the Great White is really an incorrect name, since there are no Lesser White sharks). Good times!

[MuseRider]

17. I have had some terrific experiences around sharks.

I about wet my wet suit when we saw the bull sharks, they were huge but then they were swimming around a large area with grouper so thick you had to move them out of the way. One of the dives with the Explorer president he buddied with me. We were just doing a normal dive off Guanaja and he motioned for me to hold still and he went around a large coral wall, tall but probably no more than 20 feet long. He was following a hammerhead. I never saw it, it apparently went over the wall and over me but I was looking at stuff and missed the entire thing. It could have been BS I suppose, lol. I was mad, I would have killed to have seen that.

We got called up out of a dive in Hawaii because there was a Tiger shark spotted by another dive group. Messed up a couple of days. They had an experience there where they run a long steel cable with stations and at night you could go out and they would hang you on a station and you could drop down I think 35 feet max maybe and then they would watch for you when you came up. Large pelagic experience. I wanted to do that but that tiger shark spoiled that experience. That was a great group, they did studies and we talked environmental impacts a lot with them.

I was on a live-aboard in the Bahamas but had pneumonia and left the hospital AMA to get there so I did not dive. The other was a week trip on a 35 foot sailboat out of Bequia. We sailed and dove all around the Grenadines. We never made it to Grenada because our captain would not go there. 7 months later Reagan bombed the place. It was heaven though, that trip.

Your trip sounds idyllic. Back when we were doing all of this the only thing really expensive was the gear but you bought it once and it lasted the entire time I was diving. Cheap and fun and mostly empty airlines. (have flown in a couple of planes I would never in a million years get into now) Little mom and pop places to stay that were cheap and you helped in the kitchen if you wanted. Sailing was cheap out of St. Vincent then. Now....I priced a live aboard thinking we could take our kids and their girlfriends and was astonished. A couple days on one of them would cost as much as an entire trip or more back in the days we were doing this.

Things have changed but I am so so happy I did this when I did. It is sad that my kids loved it as much as we did but they will never be able to afford it, we certainly can't now either.

We always stayed at Prospect Reef very close to Road Town. It had some tidal pools that were a blast to hang out in an see various little fish. Their dive operation was great. I have to admit to a preference to the West side. Sopers Hole is so awesome and some of the little communities between it and Carrot Bay are just the best. I will check out your link. If there is one thing I would like to do more than anything before I die it would be to dive again but if not I want to see that island again, we did 4 trips there. The best, if there was no diving, would be to sail the channel out of Road Town. We were on a dive boat to dive the wreck of the Rhone when we stopped at a more private island to take mail to Patrick Moynihan. He ran out to the boat and hopped on, gave the driver a hug and left with his mail. We just sat there stunned. You just never know.

Fat Hog Bob's sounds familiar. Was that one of those very cool open air bars West of Road Town by the sailing schools? Those were always so loud and fun. Now this snow storm coming in next week is looking worse and worse to me. Whenever I have to relax or not freak out about something Tortola is the place I visualize. I will be there next week in my mind when I have to dig the barns out of the snow. Thanks for this wonderful conversation.

[Divernan]

18. A treat on cold winter's day to talk diving - thanks

The first scuba joke I heard: Divers belong to two schools regarding peeing in their wetsuit: Those who do and those who lie about it.

I always did at the 15 foot safety stop before getting back on the diveboat for the hour break before a 2nd dive or the long bumpy ride back to shore! TMI.


(Here insert emoticon for diver hand sign for "OK&quot

[MuseRider]

19. I never could,

never. I tried but just never managed.

We used to make jokes about our skins and farting since there was no opening for your feet and you are often tipped down somewhat and under increased pressure. One of our group was a proctologist, you can imagine....

I always love the boats with a head!

It was warm here today. Scary warm, 69 degrees. In a few days the high will be 31, low 18 with big wind and snow. So unpredictable. Still talking diving is almost my favorite thing. Third to looking at pictures and actually doing it.

Those safety stops were always a bit of a pain but I loved looking out at all my friends just floating under water without moving, only bubble coming from the top (or perhaps from their skins,lol)

Did you ever dive with Nitrox? I never did because I always had half a tank of air left after everyone else was out and dry but my husband did and really liked it. Being a woodwind player all my life gave me great bottom times!

[Divernan]

20. Got certified in nitrox at Buddy Dive Resort/Bonaire

Had a wonderful week there over Valentine's Day one year (including a moonlit romantic interlude at the Red Slave Huts!). But I never really bothered to dive w/nitrox after that - it was just one of those certs/"merit badges" I collected to get my Master Diver cert.

We took our gear and trucked up to Washington-Slagbaai National Park on the north side of the island and did a shore dive off a tiny, deserted beach up there, which was foolish because the currents nearly swept us out to open ocean. My dive buddy literally saved my life by helping me make it back to shore.

[B Calm]

5. What was he doing in the Caymans?

[elias49]

7. Going to the bank drive-up window?

[B Calm]

10. Bingo!

[Cal Carpenter]

13. But..but... PHILANTHROPY!!1!!

Eat the rich.

[KamaAina]

16. From a friend in Portlandia:

He did pretty much the same thing to the Portland Trail Blazers.

[Marrah_G]

21. He needs to hire some people to replant those reefs.