Trinidadian turtles crawled slowly to the top of the Caribbean tweeting agenda this week.

 

As river diversion work last weekend killed what environmentalists said had been 20,000 leatherback turtle eggs and hatchlings, the Twitterverse went crazy.

 

Environmentalists showed their social media skills as they spread word of the incident.

 

Trinidadian authorities fought back quickly in the spin war, starting with a visit to the northern Trinidad site by Tourism Minister Stephen Cadiz and numerous press statements issued in Port of Spain and abroad.

 

The use of social media as a lobby and spin tool has been a fascinating tale which is still unfolding. 

 

CI’s comment and gossip regular twitter round-up - @whatsthebuzz3 - will continue to follow this one.

 

 

Also on Twitter this week, the countdown to many things bound to interest Caribbean people increased apace.

 

Jamaicans tweeted about two weeks to go to the Olympics, Bajans tweeted about the countdown to Cropover, Canadians started the launch to Caribana and Trinidadians stepped up news on their 50^th anniversary plans.

 

Jamaica50 (@Jamaica50) pulled together all Jamaican tweets on the countdown to the country’s 50^th Independence anniversary on one twitter feed. The land of wood and water has the double whammy of its independence and the global focus on its formidable Olympic team.

 

“Is this the year of Jamaica?” one tweeter said. “I certainly think so.”

 

 

One thing not pleasing Jamaicans is their small change.

 

Jamaicans, according to word on Twitter, prefer the big dollar wine. 

 

The basis for this is a report by the Jamaica Observer looking at how “red money” (coins) are hardly being reused. The paper reports that this is partly due to impatience and partly due to stores rounding off prices for convenience.  The winner in this “dissing” of small change has been the charity boxes at shop counters.

 

 

One of the earliest Caribbean teams to arrive in the UK is the Grenadian side.

 

Their pre-Olympic meetings and visits have been welcomed and tweeted on by the media and people of Sunderland in north-east England.

 

Grenada’s 200m Olympic hopeful Joel Redhead was quoted by one reporter in wonderful understatement while training: “He admits he is loving the culture in England apart from the weather which he feels is very different to life in the West Indies.”

 

 

Quietly, in the Cayman Islands, the country rolled out mobile voting.

 

Not voting on your mobile phone but the next convenient thing – a mobile voting booth which turned up in parts of The Caymans to save people heading to the usual voting booths.

 

People had to apply in advance and mostly people running stations, police officers and those unable to attend a polling station were the beneficiaries.

 

 

Trinidadian tweeters were excited by the identity of the man who tricked Nicki Minaj’s video team out of TT$100,000 (US$15,750).

 

The fraudster collected the money for services to be provided to the production of the music video Nicki shot in Port of Spain last week.

 

Nothing was delivered and, according to the Trinidad newspapers, no-one wants to go on record about the fraudster who is allegedly well known in entertainment circles.

 

Trinidadian authorities are working with Nicki’s New York producers.

 

In the words of the video she filmed in Trinidad, it was time to ‘Pound the alarm’.