Guides get info on Goff’s Caye
While the ten special marine tour guides were getting their certificates and having lunch with the Minister at the Princess Hotel, down the street at the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute a group of their colleagues were learning about the proper use of Goff’s Caye, a tiny one acre island located twelve miles offshore Belize City. No one currently manages the caye and with more and more tourists finding their way unto its sandy beaches, the C.Z.M.A.I. is taking a proactive approach to its upkeep. Organiser of the one day symposium, Tanya Williams Thompson, says this first of two workshops this week is part of the institute’s education programme.
Tanya Williams-Thompson, Organiser, Tour Guide Training
“Well this is an area where Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute has been doing lot of work since 1999, doing monitoring and lately we have implemented a project there. And we recognise that this is a caye that’s very important and it needs management. It needs infrastructure, etcetera.”
“We realise that though tour guides have gone under some training in order for them to become tour guide, there were issues that were very specific to Goff’s Caye, like proper garbage disposal, utilising mooring buoys that have just been installed at Goff’s Caye and basic things like coral ecology, reef behaviour and etiquette; issues that are very specific to Goff’s Caye.”
Nazha Romero, Marine Tour Guide
“Today I feel like I am walking away with a year or a lifetime of information because it is information I am going to use on my job and information that I can’t even get off the internet because I have tried to go on the internet to retain information about Belize in regards to the various cayes and it is difficult. I have achieved a lot today.”
“I am a Belizean, but no Belizean knows everything about their country. And Goff’s caye is a small island, which is on our barrier reef. And the only thing I normally would sell Goff’s Caye about is that it is one acre in length and width and it’s referred to as “Gilligan’s Island” so as to relate to the world of our tourists. And I have been given so much information by the conservation department that I was not aware of and it gives me information that I can share with my fellow tour guides.”
Tanya Williams
“It has been excellent. I mean tour guides recognise that there is a need to do follow up training other than the basic tour guide training. And there is also a push from them to have management of Goff’s Caye. And I think that was what we wanted to hear from them today because we recognised it but we wanted to know that other people do also.”
Forty-three marine tour guides from Belize City took part in today’s seminar. Williams-Thompson says that a similar exercise will be conducted in San Pedro town on Thursday for guides from the islands.
