Column: Sea Connection, Blue Economy & More
[Opinion column written by Ryan Smith]
Bermuda is known all over the world as an economical miracle. There is a second miracle that we live with daily though, albeit an unrecognized or rather underappreciated one. Connection to the wider world. This of course has a strong relationship with the first miracle.
There are few comparatively sized and remote locations as well connected to the world as Bermuda, and that connection comes in myriad forms: financially, recreationally, logistically. Especially logistically.
We are able to take this connection for granted, and we do, because the people whose jobs are to maintain them are great at what they do!
Let’s take a look at our cargo shipping. Three ships cross the Atlantic Ocean to the East coast. Two of them travel weekly, and the third crosses three times a month. A ship servicing Bermuda’s cargo requirements visits the US Eastern seaboard one hundred and forty times a year. That is better than a visit every third day!
Now, if we take a look at passenger air traffic things really get interesting. Currently [mid October] seven airlines connect Bermuda to seven major cities and most do this daily, while all connect multiple times per week. During the peak tourist season these linkages span even further. Let’s conservatively assume that each airline connected Bermuda with a major city four times a week. That’s a whopping twenty-eight flights! Now let’s say this traffic continued all year- no high or low season shifts. Bermuda connected with a major city one thousand, four hundred and fifty-six times. Conservatively speaking.
Those cities are spread across three countries and two continents. And they are located in five different regions [six with the Boston flight, which arrives in New England]: the Southeastern USA, the mid-Atlantic area, the Great Lakes region, the Northeast USA and Southern England.
So, between cargo ships and passenger flights, our little rock in the middle of the Sargasso Sea [a sea with no land borders, mind you] over one year connects us to the bigger world about sixteen hundred times! Conservatively!
The vast majority of these connections deliver goods to Bermuda, especially the cargo shipping. For a moment though, let’s imagine if these connections carried goods out of Bermuda.
Imagine a Bermuda that manufactured!
Imagine a Bermuda that exported!
Imagine- What Can Be.
Then ask yourself, what is Bermuda’s competitive advantage? What could Bermuda manufacture?
Sea for yourself. Sea for Bermuda. Sea our EEZ and sea the Blue Economy.
See our Connectivity.
- Ryan Smith is an advocate for the development of the Blue Economy and is working directly towards building an aquaculture industry in Bermuda through his start-up, GASP. GASP is focused on producing fish through Open Ocean Mariculture technology and is focused on the export market.
