NICARAGUA BUILDING ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS TO BOOST TOURISM

Nicaragua’s Port Authority Empresa Portu-aria Nacional (EPN) is building nine artificial islands at the Bluefields Bay area in an attempt to boost tourism in the region. A dredge owned by EPN should extract 581442 cubic meters (about 760500 cubic yards) of sediments which will be used to build the artificial islands. The $1.3 million US dredge should take five to six months from late October to complete both the building of the islands as well as the second dredging phase of the Bluefields Bay project in the South Caribbean Autonomous Region (RACS) of Nicaragua. Each island will have an average size of 80 meters of diameter. The vessel has a 1000 cubic meters (about 1308 cubic yards) per hour capacity.