An environmental pressure group is to ask Governor Thorold Masefield for a Royal Commission to probe a bid for a massive $65 million housing development over a unique and fragile cave system.

And tomorrow's issue of The Royal Gazette will carry a printed objection form to the development at Ship's Hill and Tucker's Point in Hamilton Parish, near Marriott's Castle Harbour Resort.

Yesterday Ian MacDonald-Smith of SOS said: "It will be an objection to the development which individuals can fill out and submit to the Department of Planning.

"And if we have lots of objections, if a lot of people fill in the forms, then we have a little bit more credibility when we go to the Governor and say we should have a Royal Commission into this.'' The move is the latest in a long-running saga to block the development in the Ship's Hill area.

Bermuda Properties Ltd. (BPL) earlier this month applied for final planning approval for the development of 13 houses with swimming pools, 13 two-storey town houses, a communal pool, four tennis courts and a water tank -- down from their original plans for 37 houses.

Conservationists say the development will wreck a sensitive area of Bermuda and the underlying caves, which Mr. MacDonald-Smith said are home to 25 "native and endemic shrimp species which are on the critical and endangered list''.

SOS is already set to challenge planning approval for the development, with a court date pencilled in around the turn of next month.

BPL insists that its plans will enhance the area, will not endanger the cave and will give native plant species a chance to thrive -- and boost the Castle Harbour resort.

Original permission for development was given in principle in 1995 amid threats that the Marriott group -- which has suffered multi-million dollar losses in Bermuda -- would quit the Island if losses continued.

Mr. MacDonald Smith said: "We are talking about 13 swimming pools right over a very delicate ecosystem.

"The reality is that no-one can guarantee that these pools and the houses, which will be using fertilisers and pesticides and things like that, will not affect the safety of the caves underneath -- and they are building right on top of the caves.'' He added that the original approval in principle was given by special development order -- a controversial move which bypasses normal application procedures.

Mr. MacDonald-Smith said: "There really wasn't any recourse the public had.

We are fighting firstly to delay BPL and then applying to the Governor for a special Commission on the development.'' But Mr. MacDonald-Smith said there was still "potential for a very good compromise'' by doing a land swap with the soon-to-be worked out Government Quarry, also in Hamilton Parish.

He said a suggestion for a land swap more than two years ago was knocked back on the grounds the quarry still had two years of useful life.

But he added: "They said last year there was a year left -- the year is up.

"We saw the Works and Engineering Minister C.V. Jim Woolridge last week and he is going to look into this again.''