Pao­lo Ker­na­han

In re­view­ing the footage, my eyes are locked on one ma­rine spec­i­men which we cap­tured on video­tape out on the Saly­bia reef while shoot­ing for the Bush Di­ary na­ture se­ries. I had seen it be­fore and was just as con­fused then. Look­it, this thing looks ex­act­ly like what I imag­ined lob­ster fry (young) would look like with the ex­cep­tion of one im­por­tant de­tail. In pro­por­tion to its body, it is wield­ing a pair of large pin­cers. This did not make sense be­cause lob­sters in the Caribbean do not sport claws. Could it be that we had dis­cov­ered a new species in Trinidad?

"No, Pao­lo, what you in fact had there was some­thing called the pis­tol shrimp and it does not get very large. It is named thus­ly be­cause of air pock­ets in its claws which, when they snap shut, emit a pop­ping sound..." Those were the last words I heard from Prof Ju­lian Ken­ny when I spoke to him very re­cent­ly. In fact, Prof Ken­ny was prob­a­bly ac­cus­tomed to re­ceiv­ing a num­ber of calls from me over the past month as I have been putting to­geth­er scripts for the new sea­son of the Bush Di­ary se­ries. His in­put in the tele­vi­sion pro­gramme can­not be un­der­stat­ed. Not on­ly did I con­sult with him on ver­i­fi­ca­tion of species and be­hav­iour­ial pat­terns, I al­so sound-board­ed him for pos­si­ble episode ideas. In fact, he was the rea­son that we were at the Saly­bia reef in the first place.

Prof Ken­ny men­tioned to me in many past con­ver­sa­tions how won­der­ful this en­vi­ron­ment would be to ex­plore dur­ing the low tide. I can tell you, it cer­tain­ly did not dis­ap­point. When he was still chair­man of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, af­ter meet­ings he would of­ten ask me how shoot­ing for Bush Di­ary was go­ing. In him, I could sense an undy­ing in­quis­i­tive spir­it, even af­ter hav­ing per­son­al­ly re­searched, com­pre­hen­sive­ly, all of the en­v­i­ron- ments in this coun­try wor­thy of sci­en­tif­ic in­quiry. Ever the con­sum­mate sci­en­tist, he would cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that, in the nat­ur­al world, there are al­ways new fron­tiers of dis­cov­ery. For any jour­nal­ist who has ever pur­sued sto­ries with an en­vi­ron­men­tal an­gle, Prof Ken­ny was an in­valu­able re­source. That is not to say there weren't oth­ers in the field of nat­ur­al sci­ences who did not ad­e­quate­ly fill this role. It is just that Prof Ken­ny al­ways made him­self avail­able even when I imag­ine the con­stant calls could have as­sumed nui­sance lev­els.

Even when he was egre­gious­ly mis­quot­ed by cretins mas­querad­ing as re­porters on the sim­plest of is­sues, this nev­er soured his en­dur­ing re­la­tion­ship with the me­dia and there was a good rea­son for this. Ul­ti­mate­ly, his pri­ma­ry fo­cus was the widest pos­si­ble ed­u­ca­tion of the pop­u­la­tion on all en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. Prof Ken­ny was more than just a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist, an In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, board chair­man, colum­nist, re­cip­i­ent of the Cha­co­nia Gold, fa­ther, hus­band...phew. He was the repos­i­to­ry of a vast body of work which spanned well over 50 years in the field of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­search and ad­vo­ca­cy. Based on most of his pub­li­ca­tions, I gath­er that Prof Ken­ny leaned, in spe­cial­i­sa­tion, to­wards ma­rine en­vi­ron­ments. An avid div­er, he would have record­ed im­ages of some of the most spec­tac­u­lar coral life in this coun­try in some of the most fore­bod­ing lo­ca­tions you could shud­der to imag­ine.

Al­so an ac­com­plished pho­tog­ra­ph­er, some of the most strik­ing im­ages of our nat­ur­al her­itage are con­tained in his books. What I learned to ap­pre­ci­ate in his pho­tog­ra­phy was his abil­i­ty to bring to life crea­tures which would or­di­nar­i­ly be ig­nored as un­in­ter­est­ing by mak­ing them prance, strut or men­ace on the glossy page. Prof Ken­ny would at times re­fer to an­i­mals or en­vi­ron­ments that are un­re­mark­able in sci­en­tif­ic terms, but one al­ways got a sense that there was very lit­tle about na­ture that did not fas­ci­nate him. I sup­pose by mod­ern stan­dards it would be dif­fi­cult for Prof Ken­ny to fit the bill of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist. He was not stand­ing on a street cor­ner with a bull­horn or chain­ing him­self to trees. His week­ly col­umn, though, could al­ways be count­ed up­on for a fierce crack­ing of the whip in whichev­er di­rec­tion it was most need­ed. His fierce in­de­pen­dence from par­ti­san pol­i­tics was man­i­fest in an al­most pal­pa­ble seething dis­taste for the du­plic­i­ty of the politi­cians.

You would scarce­ly see the words prag­ma­tist and im­pas­sioned en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist rub­bing el­bows in the same sen­tence but this, in my opin­ion, was one of his most valu­able qual­i­ties. When I had called him quite re­cent­ly to can­vass his views on con­cerns raised by hunters on the im­pact of seis­mic test­ing for oil ex­plo­ration in the Trin­i­ty Hills pro­tect­ed sanc­tu­ary, his re­sponse, to say the least, was quite sur­pris­ing: "Pao­lo, to be quite hon­est, seis­mic test­ing has achieved such ad­vance­ment that, when stand­ing above a charge which has been det­o­nat­ed in the earth, the sen­sa­tion that one feels on the sur­face is neg­li­gi­ble so this is very un­like­ly to have an im­pact on wildlife in the area. "The re­al down­side of the ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties in the Trin­i­ty Hills is an open­ing up of the for­est be­cause there has al­ready been a sig­nif­i­cant amount of for­est clear­ing that has ex­posed the en­vi­ron­ment there to the re­al threat, un­fet­tered hunt­ing."

Any­one who knows Prof Ken­ny would know that there is no love lost be­tween him and the hunt­ing com­mu­ni­ty with the for­mer con­sid­er­ing the lat­ter a scourge up­on the land­scape. I be­lieve Prof Ken­ny has al­ways ap­pre­ci­at­ed that pas­sion alone can­not pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment. There must be a healthy mar­riage be­tween the sci­ence of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism and the coun­try's de­vel­op­men­tal as­pi­ra­tions in or­der for the nat­ur­al world to be giv­en the slight­est chance in an al­ready un­fair fight. With that said, he was al­so not afraid to show who he was back­ing in that fight and this was made clear in his last act of de­fi­ance against this ad­min­is­tra­tion for its fail­ure to mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the threat posed by ram­pant quar­ry­ing. Prof Ken­ny was an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist but un­der­stood the Sen­ate and par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure bet­ter than our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, most of whom are just tread­ing wa­ter. He could not be fooled nor could be bought and he spent every wak­ing mo­ment in ser­vice to his coun­try, a very rare bird in­deed.

I re­mem­ber Prof Ken­ny as a very nice man, an old school cat...af­fa­ble, fun­ny, help­ful, Queen's Eng­lish and all this. When he was still chair­man of the EMA, he ex­hort­ed us all to try to pro­vide some re­lief to those suf­fer­ing in the din that is Trinidad by ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing the noise pol­lu­tion rules and com­ing up with cre­ative ways to thwart the bu­reau­cra­cy that en­ables of­fend­ers to flout the laws. In a way Prof Ken­ny was the re­al Pa­pa Bois, staunch de­fend­er of the en­vi­ron­ment and al­so of our coun­try as a whole. I will miss him, I will miss his guid­ance and I hope he thought of me as a friend, be­cause I cer­tain­ly con­sid­ered him mine.

THOUGHTS

• I be­lieve Prof Ken­ny has al­ways ap­pre­ci­at­ed that pas­sion alone can­not pre­serve the en­vi­ron­ment.

• He was the repos­i­to­ry of a vast body of work which spanned well over 50 years.

• One al­ways got a sense that there was very lit­tle about na­ture that did not fas­ci­nate him.