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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Great Icacos Lagoon dries up

by

Radhica De Silva
2277 days ago
20190501

Weath­er con­di­tions are so harsh that even the Great Ica­cos La­goon has dried up.

Usu­al­ly, the salt­wa­ter marsh­es are filled with wa­ter at least four feet deep but since last month, the wa­ter in la­goon be­gan to evap­o­rate be­cause of hot weath­er con­di­tions.

The gi­ant ana­con­das which live in the la­goon have dis­ap­peared. Res­i­dents said the snakes usu­al­ly wait for rain­fall and high tides to fill the marsh­es be­fore they be­gin to show up.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the la­goon on Wednes­day, cracks were seen through­out the la­goon. Skele­tal re­mains of dead fish and shells were seen scat­tered across the mud. The re­mains of an old wood­en bridge usu­al­ly cov­ered in wa­ter were now vis­i­ble.

Coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teek­lucks­ingh said this year’s drought-like con­di­tions made the marsh­es dry up ear­li­er than usu­al. He said a few years ago, the la­goon went dry and it re­mained that way for sev­er­al weeks.

He not­ed that the dry­ing up of the la­goon al­lowed res­i­dents to clean the marsh­es so that it could once more at­tract more of bird watch­ers, fish­mon­gers and la­goon pad­dlers dur­ing the wet sea­son.

“We have picked up three truck­loads of de­bris from the marsh­es. An eco-group in Ica­cos has been lead­ing the way to clean the la­goon. It is one of the best tourist at­trac­tions in Ica­cos,” Teelucks­ingh said.

Neil Sookram, who has been spear­head­ing the clean-up of the la­goon, said the project start­ed last April. Both la­goons are about four square kilo­me­tres each.

“We were hap­py to have two clean-up cam­paigns at the wet­lands. We pitched a tent and we had vol­un­teers use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clean the wet­lands,” Sookram said.

He said 75 peo­ple re­spond­ed to the first project and two weeks lat­er they al­so cleaned the San Jose la­goon which is lo­cat­ed a short dis­tance away.

“A to­tal of 32 peo­ple came and helped. This time it was eas­i­er to clean be­cause of the dry con­di­tions. There have been sight­ings of ana­con­das near­ing the coast but we were lucky we did not see any in the swamp,” he said.

Sookram said he has set up a Face­book page called For love of the En­vi­ron­ment. He said lit­ter war­dens need­ed to be sta­tioned near the la­goons to pre­vent fur­ther dump­ing of garbage.


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