Life's an adventure for Folly native as she protects Caribbean habitats

HIGH PROFILE: Marsha Pardee

Folly Beach always has moved to the beat of its own funky rhythms, but young Marsha Pardee was in a hurry: to graduate from high school, to get her degree, to get a marine biology job, to move.

Today, Pardee divides her year between visits to the Lowcountry and work at her home in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British territory south of the Bahamas. A few months here, a few months there, always new jobs, new causes, new projects. The one constant? The water. There's no time she can remember when she wasn't drawn toward it, wasn't "forever wanting to go farther south." Pardee grew up shrimping and crabbing on the back side of Folly; then the Caribbean hooked her on her first visit to Jamaica.

With those twin foundations established early, Pardee set about creating a life that included both. At an age when other students were thinking about making the most of high school, Pardee was hustling to graduate early so she could get started on her life's goal — moving to the Caribbean — just a bit sooner.

What kind of girl was she? "I didn't collect Barbie dolls," she says, then stops, corrects herself. "Well, I did some. But I also had a collection of fish in formaldehyde."

Today is not so different. The feminine, beach-town charm is apparent. Her professional, practical side — more than 50 environmental impact studies on sensitive island habitats, hundreds of hours spent rescuing threatened coral reefs — well, you have to puzzle that out on your own.

Getting started

Pardee earned her bachelor's degree in aquaculture and environmental management from the Florida Institute of Technology and landed her first professional job at a Jamaican fish farm all before she was old enough to buy a mixed drink.

Her parents "weren't too thrilled" by the move. "I think they responded by taking out triple indemnity insurance on me."

At the time, Pardee saw aquaculture as a way to feed a hungry world.

She tried different science jobs, did a little island-hopping and picked up a master's degree in ecology along the way. But while other researchers steered their careers toward academic life, Pardee gravitated toward practical applications.

She first came to the Turks and Caicos to teach marine ecology at a field institute. That was 1992, and even though she thought the islands were beautiful, she didn't see herself settling there.

A 10-year marriage would change all that.

But the big surprise was a fire. Spiny lobsters are the No. 1 resource of the Turks and Caicos, and Pardee and some partners had poured everything they had into starting a live-lobster marketing facility.

One night, it just burned down.

"After that, what are you going to do? And that's where I learned to do just about anything I could do to make a living in marine biology."

Habitat protector

When it comes to protecting the environment from development, the heavy lifting starts with something called an environmental impact study.

It surveys species, predicts how plans would affect them and recommends compromises. With development in the islands booming, Pardee has performed about 50 of these studies.

Not that her recommendations are always heeded or even recorded.

"But I've had other ones when we've been able to work more directly with a client, and (I can show) the design team how to save money by doing the right thing."

Which is how a Folly Beach native helped write the National Environmental Standards for the Turks and Caicos Islands. Politics will go a long way toward determining their final shape, but Pardee hopes her advocacy for the environment made a contribution.

Writing regulations and authoring studies and articles don't change the blue-collar nature of much of Pardee's work.

She spends much of her time on projects that distribute Reef Balls, which are concrete structures that can be used to repair coral reefs damaged by dredging or pollution, or to create new reefs that help reduce the tourism pressure on healthy habitats.

Pardee's primary role involves carefully collecting corals from imperiled reefs and transplanting them onto the Reef Balls. But she also can be found making, transporting and placing the heavy structures. "I can't say that there's much glamorous about it."

And then, life

Pardee's home across from the beach on the island of Providenciales doesn't have much in the way of neighbors, or even have glass windows, for that matter: Just pull-down screens for bugs and shutters for storms. Otherwise, the house is open to the breeze. She lives there with her dogs and her downstairs tenants. It hasn't always been easy, but it's very near the life Pardee dreamed of back in her student days at Bishop England and James Island high schools. The work is often hard and hot and physical, and protecting silent species doesn't pay particularly well. But a job you love comes with its own satisfactions. And island life offers its peculiar rewards, such as the opportunity to collaborate on a children's Christmas book with an artist friend.

"I feel really lucky. It's been a good opportunity to watch a country grow into these things, an opportunity I likely wouldn't have been able to have in the States, at least not at this level," she said. "I've had a lot of opportunities, but I've worked hard. It's been a grand adventure."

Reach Dan Conover at conover@postandcourier.com.