By JASMIN BONIMY, Guardian Staff Reporter

jasmin@nasguard.com

Concerned Paradise Island tour operators have requested a meeting with Minister of Financial Services and Investments Vincent Peet in a bid to protect Athol Island and its surrounding sea gardens.

In a letter faxed to Minister Peet, tour operators said they turned to the government official after they were told that the Energy and Environment Ministry had forwarded to Mr Peet's ministry a final Environmental Impact Assessment on Athol Island, the site of a new golf course for the third phase of the Atlantis development.

"We urgently request a meeting to have our minds put at rest that our government will make the right decision to save Athol Island, protect our coral reefs and the livelihood of all the tour operators," the letter read. "Do we have to remind all our Ministries that the number one industry in The Bahamas is Tourism?"

The Athol Island controversy was sparked earlier when word got out that work on the proposed golf course for the island would begin before the end of the year.

Experts believe that the pesticides and other toxic materials that will be used to maintain the golf course will kill the corals beneath the water.

In recent months, local tour operators and environmentalists have asked the government to put a stop to the development and make Athol Island a national park and the surrounding ocean a marine park, similar to what is being proposed for Clifton Cay.

Local environmentalist, Sam Duncombe, has said that Athol Island is one of the last natural untouched pieces of land in the New Providence and Paradise Island chain and if that is destroyed, "we will have virtually nothing left."

The Act to Protect the Sea Gardens came into effect in 1892 and was overturned by The Bahamas government in 1986. Since then, it has been said that the "world's oldest sea gardens" no longer exist legally.