Two 'thruster walls' designed to keep sediment out of the Dolphin Quest facility accounted for two-thirds of the "dolphin mitigation" costs, according to contractors.

Correia Construction Company revealed the costings to The Royal Gazette yesterday following speculation over the "$3.7 million" Premier Ewart Brown said was spent on measures to protect the animals during construction of the second cruise ship pier.

On March 11, Tourism Minister Dr. Brown said a $6 million overspend last year on the project was in part due to an unexpected sum spent on "dolphin mitigation".

He told MPs that pile driving and thruster tests were necessary to ensure the animals were undisturbed by noise, vibration and ship sediment.

"It went up to $3.7 million," said the Premier. "That's really taking excellent care of the dolphins."

But this was questioned in the House of Assembly the following week by Deputy Opposition Leader Trevor Moniz, prompting Works and Engineering Minister Derrick Burgess to tell MPs: "As far as the point that the honourable member Trevor Moniz made, $3.7 million was spent on a study for the dolphins. That was for a consultant."

On March 23, Shadow Tourism Minister Michael Dunkley then submitted Parliamentary Questions to Junior Minister for Tourism, Marc Bean, asking for "details on how $3.7 million was spent on 'dolphin mitigation', including all payments in connection with this matter".

The Senate is due to reconvene on Wednesday but this weekend, Correia Construction owner Dennis Correia met with The Royal Gazette to give a breakdown of the costings. He said total costs for "the Dolphin Mitigation as of September 2007" were $3,407,166.00. $2,254,166.00 of this was spent on two steel 'thruster walls' to prevent sediment from ship thrusters reaching Dolphin Quest or causing coastal erosion.

Each wall is 50 ft in height and 238 ft in length. Mr. Correia said installation began in March but was delayed due to "bad weather".

"We are going to put them in place this summer, specifically to protect the dolphins," he said.

Commenting on Parliamentary Questions tabled by the Opposition, he said: "We have nothing to hide. Anyone can look at our books, there's nothing to hide anywhere.

"I'm pretty sure we were close to $3.7 million with the 'dolphin mitigation'.

"All our costs were directly related to making sure the dolphins were good and would not be affected by the job.

"The Bermuda Government told us we had to do whatever we had to do."