ENVIRONMENT-CARIBBEAN: Breathing New Life Into The Corals

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dionne Jackson-Miller

MONTEGO BAY, May 23 1998 (IPS) - For hundreds of years, a colourful underwater world of tropical fish and branching coral has characterised the waters off Jamaica’s famous white sand beaches.

But over the last few decades, as in many other countries, the colours have grown dull, as the corals died, and mossy green alge began to dominate the collage of marine life.

The deterioration has been attributed to both natural and human- related factors.

Natural factors include the epidemic that devastated a long- spined black sea urchin which was an important herbivore on reefs throughout the Caribbean, as well as hurricane damage,

The impact caused by humans include improper sewage treatment and disposal which over-loaded coastal waters with nutrient leading to an explosion in the growth of algae which then smothered the corals, and over-fishing which devastated populations of fish which grazed on the over-powering algae.

In an effort to arrest the deterioration, the Jamaican government joined with eight other countries in developing the International Coral Reef Institute (ICRI) over three years ago.

ICRI was launched on Dec. 7, 1994, and was founded by the governments of Australia, France, Japan, Jamaica, the Philippines, Sweden, the Untied Kingdom and the United States of America.

Since then, authorities here have been busy putting the paperwork in place to protect the island’s reefs, while the corals continue to disappear.

Executive Director of the Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society, Katy Thacker says that fact confers a certain responsibility on the Jamaican government. “We can’t just sign on to these things and not do nything We nee to put these things into motion,” she says.

Director of the Centre for Marine Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Dr. Jeremy Woodley reported three years ago that coral in Jamaica was down from 60 percent to as low as five percent.

This state of affairs was reflected in many other countries and prompted ICRI to approve in 1995 an operational platform called the Call to Action, and develop a Framework for Action.

The Call to Action highlighted the global decline of coral reefs, with some 10 percent of the world’s reefs said to be seriously degraded and a greater percentage threatened. The Call to Action encompasses areas like coastal management, and research and monitoring, which are also addressed in the more comprehensive Framework for Action.

The Jamaican government has been busy generating paper of its own following its very public commitment to coral reef protection. So far, a draft of a Coral Reef Protection and Preservation Policy and Regulation, as well as a Jamaican Coral Reef Action Plan have been prepared.

The Coral Reef Action Plan seeks to develop sustainable coastal zone management. More than ‘activities’ are identified as necessary, ranging from the establishment of endowment fuds for the comanagement of coral reefs and coastal resources, to strengthening parks ad protected areas.

Thker is not impressed with the paprwork, and says little real progress has been made locally I know there was a document drafted, and I know there was some intention doing an island- wide (coral reef) monitoring programme, but I haven’t seen any action yet.”

Manager of the Montego Bay Marine Park, Malden Miller says the documentation is a step in the right direction, but only one step. “I know the policies have to be in place, but where does it take you in terms of implementation and work in the field to accomplish anything?”

Woodley agrees that the development of the policy and plan is positive, but questions whether the activities identified are actually being carried out.

A governmental committee to oversee implementation was nominally formed, but environmentalist Peter Espeut who was asked to chair the group, says no meetings have so far taken place. The absence of an implementing agency may be responsible for what critics like Thacker see as inaction.

And local reef monitoring programmes show mixed results. In the northcoast tourism resort of Negril, Thacker says there has been no improvement over the years.

“Right now, our recent baseline assessment showed that on the average live coral coverage is less than 10 percent, and algae coverage is more than 85 percent. That’s pretty bad, what we’re losing is our shoreline protection,” she says.

She says storms in December and January eroded an average of 38.5 feet of beach and up to 60 feet in some areas of Negril, and that it was the death of the area’s coral reefs that left the beach so vulnerable to storm damage.

Reefs in Montego Bay seem to be in slightly better shape, but still not much to cheer about. Miller says coral cover has dropped from over 70 percent in the 1970s to about 15 percent today.

Despite the establishmt of the legally protected Montego Bay Marine Park six years, coral recovery has not been rapid. “The (reef) monitoring we’ve been doing doesn’t reflect major improvements,” says Thacker.

At Discovery Bay in St. Ann, the UWI maintains a marine laboratory for teaching and research. Woodley, former head of the laboratory says the initial deterioration of coral was largely due to hurricane damage and the sea urchin epidemic.

The government has also been talking up a storm regardingthe establishment of protected areas, but with few areas actually legally declared, several community groups have taken matter into their own hands.

These include the Discovery Bay Fishermen’s Co-operative which has set up an unofficial fish sanctuary, and the Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society, both of which started unofficially protecting marine resources while waiting for government to legally declare protected areasin their communities.

“It’s very important that work does go on at that level, that is to say with ordinary people using the resources. We need to see more action at the local level,” says Woodley.

And although the state of the island’s coral reefs is generally acknowledged to be grim, the situation is not thought to be hopeless.

“There (are) pockets of hope, and if we can restore water qulity, those areas (in which) there is hope can re-seed the areas that have degraded, but we’re not talking about anything we’re going to see in our lifetime,” Thacker says.

Woodley is also cautiously optimistic about the possibility of the reefs recovering. “If we’re lucky enough not to experience any major hurricanes, for say another 10 to 20 years that would be a major factor in our favour.”