A call has been made for a Reef Rehabilitation Programme to be established in Barbados, to better preserve the marine environment surrounding the island and the reef systems contained therein.
The call came recently from Minister of Environment and Drainage, Dr. Denis Lowe, as he spoke on a Resolution on the Barbados Green Economy Scoping Study, while in the House of Assembly this week.
“We have the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU) group of professionals who do a tremendous amount of work in studying the particular trends and helping us to understand what needs to be done, but the one trend that we are finding extremely troubling, is the compromise of our reefs and as a result, the inhabitants of those reefs are now taking flight,” Lowe remarked.
“Now pot fishers who have their trade in fishing in reef areas, they are also observing that the fish population has been so impacted, that the fish take has been reduced significantly. I have advised on more than one occasion, the Government, the Cabinet, that we need to do something about it and we need to put in place a Reef Rehabilitation Programme that may involve the transplantation of reefs, of corals, that may involve the implementation of artificial reef systems, as a way of incubating the growth of new corals in the area,” Lowe further noted.
“Now this is vitally important, because reef fish are the producers of sand and if there are taking flight, they are dying off, if there is overfishing, we can compromise our beaches. Our beaches are already far enough threatened by human activity, by illegal dumping in the ocean. There is a lot of that going on. The EPD has been doing some tremendous work around the Walkers Bay area in identifying some of the challenges there and we are advising those who use the ocean for pleasure and for work, that they must not engage in the pollution of the ocean, by depositing garbage, plastic and so on, on the ocean bed. These objects are causing great concern to the marine space,” Lowe stated. (RSM)
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