THE COASTAL ZONE Management Unit (CZMU) will be seeking to grow coral in order to combat the degradation of Barbados’ reefs.
Acting director Dr Lorna Inniss, told the media today during a briefing to launch a weekly national educational programme, that the CZMU would be breaking new ground in this regard. It was held at Brandon’s Beach, St Michael.
“We have temperatures soaring in July and August and coral are extremely sensitive to small changes in temperature so as a result when temperatures get too high, coral reefs are being stressed. What we are seeing is that many of the reefs are either dead, dying or extremely stressed and are not growing the way we would like.
“So we are actually looking at setting up coral nurseries, a very new technology across the world. We are going to be testing it over the next two years, seeing if we can get the coral to grow and then transplanting them to see how they do which requires we be very careful concerning the water quality of the areas we transplant them to,” she said.
As for the education programme, Inniss said the CZMU had more than 30 years of work under its belt and it was time for Barbados to be made more aware of it.
“We have a very mature, successful, well-staffed coastal zone management programme in Barbados that really constitutes a success story, not just for Barbados but for the region, and is a global best practice in the management of coastal and marine areas.
“Today we launch a national programme, what we are calling 30 years of Integrated Coastal Zone Management in Barbados, designed to educate the public on what we have done for the past 30 years.
We are hoping that as we go through this journey and provide Barbadians with the history of how we have gotten to where we are today that we would be able to educate and make them more aware of what successive administrations have supported coastal zone management in Barbados and what had made us one of the premier coastal zone management programmes across the globe,” she said. (CA)
