SAN­DRA L BLOOD

On March 3, 1677, Rock­ley Bay in To­ba­go be­came a fierce bat­tle­ground when the French and Dutch en­gaged in a dead­ly war for the is­land.

The French were de­feat­ed, with 13 or more of their flag­ships and oth­er ves­sels de­stroyed and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 peo­ple lost.

Ru­ins and arte­facts re­main on the seabed. Some were ex­ca­vat­ed and re­turned while some are safe­ly stored. To­day, re­search in­to the sunken Huis de Kre­unin­gen bat­tle­ship con­tin­ues. In 2012, As­so­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Mar­itime Ar­chae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut and Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal In­sti­tute of Amer­i­ca’s Prof Kroum Batch­varov ini­ti­at­ed an ex­er­cise—a re­quest to link with To­ba­go.

He was even­tu­al­ly in­tro­duced to Dr Levis Guy-Obi­akor, a To­bag­on­ian po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and in­ter­na­tion­al lawyer with a pas­sion for and in­ter­est in mar­itime his­to­ry, gen­er­al ed­u­ca­tion, world­ly-think­ing chil­dren, div­ing, and the sea.

The Rock­ley Bay Re­search Project (RBRP) be­gan. Dr Guy-Oki­a­bor is di­rec­tor of the project, which was au­tho­rised by then-Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles with a view to help­ing pre­serve the is­land’s rich, but oth­er­wise en­dan­gered mar­itime her­itage.

Dur­ing the first two phas­es of the project, some arte­facts were ex­ca­vat­ed. On No­vem­ber 20, Dr Guy-Obi­akor of­fi­cial­ly kicked off the third phase of the project, which con­tin­ues un­til De­cem­ber 8, cov­er­ing ex­plo­ration and ed­u­ca­tion for lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al stu­dents of mar­itime ar­chae­ol­o­gy.

UN­ESCO has is­sued a call for ap­pli­ca­tions for the UN­ESCO Foun­da­tion in Train­ing for the Pro­tec­tion of Un­der­wa­ter Cul­tur­al Her­itage in the Caribbean To­ba­go at Rock­ley Bay, Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

UN­ESCO is work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cul­tur­al Her­itage Agency of the Nether­lands, an ex­ec­u­tive body of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Cul­ture and Sci­ence (OCW) and ICO­MOS’ In­ter­na­tion­al Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mit­tee on Un­der­wa­ter Cul­tur­al Her­itage.

Dr Guy-Obi­akor ex­plained, “We de­pend on the oceans in ways that most of us do not un­der­stand. It plays a role in cli­mate and bio­di­ver­si­ty, as well as car­bon cy­cling and stor­age. Learn­ing about what lies un­der­neath the sea, and how to pro­tect it, is worth the in­vest­ment be­cause it can make our lives bet­ter too.”