Robert Baldwin (left) of the Delegation of the European Commission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and Project Co-ordinator, Dr. Judith Mendes, during UWI’s official launch of its project on board Atlantis 15 yesterday.
UWI to the rescue
12/9/2009
By Randy Bennett
THE University of the West Indies (UWI) has come to the aid of the Caribbean’s dying coral reefs.
In collaboration with the European Union (EU), UWI officially launched an almost 1.5 million-dollar project yesterday on board the Atlantis Submarine’s vessel, Atlantis 15, that will seek to use higher education and professional training to empower Caribbean people to save their rapidly dying coral reefs.
During the submersible’s 11,199th dive, it was disclosed that as part of the project, the Caribbean Reef Education and Training Initiative (CREATIve) which is being funded by the EU, will be training ten lecturers at three universities in five Caribbean countries, who at the end of their training will then develop the first region-wide degree level course on the subject of coral biology and management from a Caribbean perspective.
Project Co-ordinator, Dr. Judith Mendes, explained that if something was not immediately done to address the ongoing problem, it was predicted that within the next 40 years the remaining coral reefs across the Caribbean could become extinct, which would in turn have a devastating effect on the region’s tourism and fishing industries.
“Reefs are the foundation of the Caribbean’s tourism and fishing industries, bringing 15 billion US dollars a year to the
region, and providing one in six Caribbean jobs, and half-a-million tonnes in food.
“All over the Caribbean, reefs are suffering terribly from over exploitation, pollution and climate change, and trying to save the region’s reef resources will be difficult, because so many people are ignorant to the devastation which is taking place.
“The reefs are under water, literally out of sight and out of mind,” she added.
Robert Baldwin, 1st Counsellor of the Delegation of the European Commission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, was also present at the launch, and he warned that as a region which relies heavily on tourism to drive its economy, the preservation of its reefs were of extreme importance.
“For this region in particular, tourism is of great importance and it’s clear that without your reefs, without the opportunity to go diving and without your sandy beaches, the whole tourism product will be greatly diminished.
“So it is not just for environmental reasons that one wants to see the degradation of the coral reefs in this region is reversed, but it is also for economic reasons as well,” he outlined.
