This Is How Curaçao Is Becoming A Sustainable Tourism Destination

Lisette Keus is on the hunt.

The shallow waters next to the Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort are teeming with invasive lionfish, and Keus, an accomplished lionfish hunter, knows where they are hiding.

“They’re not easy to find,” says Keus, who runs a business called Lionfish Caribbean, which turns these unwanted predators into jewelry. “But with some practice, you develop a sense of focus — and then you see them.”

And she does. There’s one under a rock, its spine moving back and forth in the current. Keus calmly grips her Hawaiian sling spear, aims, and takes the shot.

Keus is part of this Caribbean island’s sustainability efforts. Hotels on Curaçao are doing everything from reef cleanup to next-level conservation initiatives to preserve the fragile Caribbean ecosystem. Even Fabien Cousteau, grandson of famed explorer Jacques Cousteau, is about to become a player in this island’s sustainability landscape.

“People here are starting to understand that we should leave the Earth better than we found it, which is I think the essence of sustainability,” says Manfred van Veghel, director of the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity, a nonprofit foundation that conducts environmental research in Curaçao. “We can’t just push everything on the next generation.”

This is part four in a series about sustainable tourism in Central America and the Caribbean. Here’s part one about sustainability in Panama, part two about saving Bonaire’s number one tourist attraction and part three about Aruba’s struggles to stay sustainable.

Turning predators into pendants in Curaçao

Back on the reef, Keus releases the elastic band on her spear. The three razor-sharp prongs pierce the fist-size lionfish, killing it instantly. But its long spines continue to undulate gently in the current, making it appear to be alive. Keus slides the fish into a cylindrical plastic container called a ZooKeeper, specially built to contain the venomous lionfish.

Keus will bag another lionfish before her hunt ends and will bring them back to a picnic table at her dive shop. Nothing goes to waste. She turns the fins into necklaces, cufflinks and pendants to sell at her jewelry shop in Willemstad. And the rest of the Lionfish belongs to the dive shop’s resident cat, Cesa.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for the lionfish,” she says. “We have to hunt them. But we can also make the most of what we catch.”

Why is hunting lionfish necessary for sustainability? Lionfish are not native to the Caribbean, and they excel at reproducing. Females release 50,000 eggs every three days.

That’s right; every three days. Today, they are spreading through the Caribbean waters unchecked.

Lionfish are excellent hunters themselves and clear the reef of many native fish. They can eat a fish up to half the length of their body, including grouper, parrotfish and snapper. The only way to control the lionfish population is to hunt them, and the best way to hunt them is by strapping on a scuba tank, grabbing a spear, and descending to a depth of about 60 feet, where they hide under coral and rocks.

A sprawling sustainability program at Sandals

On the other side of the island, at the Sandals Royal Curaçao, a different kind of sustainability program is unfolding. The two-year-old property is coming at the sustainability problem from every angle, including recycling, conservation and community outreach.

“We’re still in the early stages,” says Dan Waters, the hotel’s general manager.

He’s being modest. The Sandals hotel chain has a long-standing conservation program that helps the resort save and recycle water, electricity and food. At the moment, Waters is standing in front of several bags of recycled bottles, which his staff collected as part of an Earth Day event at the all-inclusive property. There’s also the Sandals Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the company, that funds a variety of community projects.

Waters says Sandals guests want to do good. Many of them visit Curaçao schools during their vacation and read to students as part of the Sandals Foundation outreach. The company has also donated equipment to a local recycling business that is turning plastic trash into souvenirs.

Limpi Recycling is a new business that creates keychains, decorative art and soccer goalposts out of plastics that would otherwise harm the environment. Debrah Nijdam, co-owner of Limpi, says the company sources the plastic from the usual places — thrown away containers from trash and recycling bins. But they also get them from one place that others might not.

Limpi sponsors beach cleanups where volunteers visit the north end of the island. That’s where strong currents regularly deposit trash from the ocean. Nijdam estimates that they collect about 100 kilos of plastic per month. Then they return to their workshop, where they shred the plastic, melt it down, and then create new products.

“We started as a project just to create awareness around the…