SOUTH ATLANTIC WEBSITE TO KEEP BUSINESSES, GOVERNMENTS AND PEOPLE CONNECTED
By J Brock (FINN)
Have a look! The South Atlantic Islands News Team have a website that replaces falklandnews.com and sartma.com. The main targets of the website are Businesses, Governments and People.
Since the 1982 Conflict, there have been opportunities for citizens from other South Atlantic Islands to work in the Falklands as well as in Antarctica, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, St Helena and Ascension Islands, as well as living and working on other South Atlantic Islands. Indeed, some even have exchanged their homes for another South Atlantic Island, doing Government work, Environmental Science and even Marrying and producing children away from their home Island.
I began putting St. Helena News in the TEABERRY EXPRESS in 1990 when I realised that 12% of the total Falklands population were originally from St Helena. At the time there was no airport on St Helena and trips home were infrequent due to shipping schedules. With the pandemic, it still isn’t easy to get around, so the South Atlantic Islands News Team is in its element for keeping people in touch.
When I met James Glass, a Tristan da Cunha citizen who was born in the Falklands, it was decided to put news from Tristan in the TEABERRY EXPRESS as well. He, Felicity, and their children, Norman and Sarah had come to the Falklands to work – he in the Fisheries Department and Felicity at Government house in Stanley. When they left going back to Tristan da Cunha, I received contact fax numbers.
Due to Fax communications, the first attempt at an international and inter-islands newspaper was launched with a service called FINN(FAX). Fisheries companies in the Falklands expressed interests in South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha fisheries and subsequently St Helena and Ascension Islands Fisheries, so I went cap in hand to the relevant government officers to see if information could be shared. With the addition of the information and the sharing of FINN(FAX) to all the Islands with appropriate communications, the concept reached its potential and my list of clients did as well.
In 1997 the first website Falklandnews.com, was published in the US by Website Design and Development (WDD) Ltd. It had to be faxed to the designers, who had it re-typed in American English and placed on the www. Falklandnews.com carried mostly Falklands news but also had spaces for Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha. St Helena and Antarctic Territories. I loved it and so did the US market. It took others a while to warm up to the site. In 1998, when the Falklands got an Earth Station, The Site was updated in UK English as and when the news occurred.
My first trip to another South Atlantic Island was in 1999 when I went to Ascension Island to do an Ascension Family contact with the Falklands and to interview the Administrator, the late Mr Roger Huxley, as well as Lawson Henry, whose remit included tourism and fisheries. I made three trips to Ascension prior to travelling up the Atlantic Ridge.
In total, I made three trips up the Atlantic Ridge, on a variety of cruise ships, visiting South Georgia, Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and Ascension Islands. On each Island I interviewed Fisheries Officers and relevant business and Government representatives about the state of the fisheries and fisheries science in their region of the South Atlantic Ocean. From Tristan da Cunha (where James Glass was Director of Fisheries) to St Helena, where I interviewed the Director of Fisheries and Tara (George) Pelembe as well as Governor Hollamby, to Ascension Island, where I interviewed Lawson Henry, I noticed a growing interest in what fisheries companies and scientists were doing in the Falklands. I brought along a current Falkland Islands Telephone Directory and left them with contact numbers so they could call and ask for themselves.
Sartma.com was set up in 2003 to help other areas of the world understand about the small and remote Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, and how their businesses and Governments work. I took the decision to keep both sites, rather than lose readers in the US who were loyal to Falklandnews.com.
After SARTMA ceased publication due to the retirement of the web designer in 2019, there was no way to let a wider audience know about business and Governments in the South Atlantic, as WDD stopped hosting around the same time.
Sartma.com and Falklandnews.com were like one stop shopping and it was this format that clients liked best. What’s more is that if any Island had an emergency, like the devastating weather that hits Tristan da Cunha, news will go on site immediately and be updated immediately. Without Sartma.com and Falklandnews.com, it took 6 days to get Tristan’s news on other mainstream websites. In 2001, it took seconds to post the news to Falklandnews.com to begin getting help to Tristan. During the last spate of devastating storms on Tristan da Cunha, I took the decision to resurrect a South Atlantic Website containing news about businesses, Governments and people.
With https://www.southatlanticnews.com, the one stop shopping is back and under one roof, thanks to Katie Bruno and her team at WDD We do Digital and WordPress.
Regular stories will be published weekly except for stories of emergency situations, which will be published immediately.
Enjoy!
