Hon. Wheatley made the comment while mentioning that he recently joined a team from the National Parks Trust during their work at sea. He said that the team was in the process of testing water off The Bight near Norman Island where Willy T is located.

In noting his trip, Hon. Wheatley said, “The BVI is a large country of mainly water, so as the Minister for environment, I find myself out on boats a lot. I think that I have spent more time on boats now than on land. I was privileged to go out with the National Parks Trust team – all my teams I tend to spend some time with them to get an understanding of what they are doing. They were doing water testing and the one I went on was over at the Bight, that’s where Willy T is and we did our water samples there.”

“The reason why I went with the team is because we were doing water quality testing around the Bight because we want to make sure that the BVI waters stay as pristine as possible. It is our duty to make sure when we leave the scene here, the BVI is a little better than we met it,” Hon. Wheatley added.

As he mentioned that Willy T is a tourist favourite, the Natural Resources Minister said, “A lot can be said about Willy T. Willy T is a very iconic place in the BVI. One out of every blog about the BVI mentions Willy T. It has that kind of nature, and that kind of attraction for the BVI tourist product.”

However, the Minister noted that preservation of the environment is very important and that contravention, even by an entity like Willy T will not be tolerated.

“Willy T was brought back there under some very specific conditions. One of them being that we maintain the water quality around the area as well as other areas, but if Willy T thinks for one second I would not move them from there if they violate any of those conditions, well they got some news coming to them, because they know the conditions under which they went to the Bight and they have to and they must maintain those standards that they’ve agreed to abide by.”

“I would not think twice about removing them and putting them on dry dock, not to another location, on dry dock if they don’t do what they have to do over there,” Hon. Wheatley said.