Ascension Island and a parting gift

20 March 2014

Ascension Island lies in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean and essentially it is one gigantic fortress of the American and British military. Everywhere you look you see antennas and radar installations. The military airport is big enough to accommodate a space shuttle landing. Here the military look and listen. The word according to ‘technical’ military personnel we spoke is ‘tracking’. When asked what is being tracked, the answer is: everything. Business as usual. The military are keen to have the island for themselves, but of course cannot say so. In the miniscule hotel in Georgetown, the capital city of the island, we met a consultant to the civilian government of Saint Helena, another island 700 nautical miles to the southeast, under which Ascension resorts. He told us that the island is in the middle of the richest fishing waters of the ocean, but no fish enters the island on a commercial basis. The store in Georgetown sells only frozen meat and fish, flown in from overseas. His brief is to develop a plan for a regulated fishing industry for the island, but the military are stonewalling. In the meantime the enormous exclusion zone claimed by the British of 200 nautical miles around the island is not being exploited in an orderly fashion. There are no measures against poaching.
For the turtles the absence of commercial activity and tourism is of course a blessing. Each evening during our short stay they would ponderously storm the beaches, dig holes at the top and lay their eggs, and subsequently return to their natural habitat. Ascension has a well-equipped tourist office and conservation centre with kind ladies able to tell you all about the island. However it was impossible to arrange any excursions and all the rental cars on the island were let; to whom remains a mystery. Ascension is of volcanic origin and initially was completely barren. With the help of Kew Gardens the British have managed to develop the major mountain on the island into a green oasis, well worth visiting if you can get there. A friendly South-African has managed to bring an impressive gin palace to the island with fishing rods sticking out at all angles. He is available, for a thousand pounds a day, to help you catch the biggest fish imaginable if the pictures in the hotel patio are to be believed. The yellowfin tuna and the dorado (gilt-head bream) that are caught are usually let back into the water, but he was so kind to bring us an 11-kilo dorado that didn’t make it. Before leaving we gutted and filleted this beauty so that we now have 7 kilos of gorgeous fish fillets. Yummie. In the meantime we are now more that 100 miles north northwest of the island running before the south easterly trade winds. We have rigged a tent against the unforgiving sun and have even constructed a swimming pool on deck. Life isn’t so bad, but as the British would say: “It ain’t half hot, mum”.