Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

At Tues­day’s launch of the book Coral Reefs of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in Shaw Park, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine chal­lenged the na­tion to pro­tect its blue as­sets-not $100 bills but rather what lies be­neath the sur­face of the sea.

Au­thored by An­jani Ganase, the 40-page book pro­vides a sci­en­tif­ic un­der­stand­ing of the na­tion’s reefs. It of­fers a com­pre­hen­sive ex­plo­ration of the bi­ol­o­gy, bio­di­ver­si­ty and eco­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of reef-build­ing corals across T&T.

It al­so sheds light on the en­vi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic, and so­ci­etal im­por­tance of these del­i­cate ma­rine ecosys­tems. The hope is that the book will in­spire re­silience for coral reefs.

The pub­li­ca­tion comes at a piv­otal time as coral reefs across the world suf­fer bleach­ing from warm­ing wa­ters. Ganase, who is a coral reef ecol­o­gist with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA), warned To­ba­go’s coral reefs are not im­mune from what is hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly. She ex­plained at the launch, “Our coral reefs are pre­cious but vul­ner­a­ble. It is no mys­tery that our coral reefs in To­ba­go and around the world are in se­ri­ous demise. On­ly last week I vis­it­ed Cu­ra­cao–a reef sys­tem close to us–to see reefs that have lost most of their corals to stony coral tis­sue loss dis­ease. This dis­ease is on To­ba­go’s doorsteps, and we live in a con­nect­ed ocean.”

As the chal­lenges per­sist and get clos­er to home, she used her ad­dress to warn against sur­ren­der­ing to glob­al warm­ing.

In­stead, Ganase said, “With man­age­ment, we can hope to slow the dec­i­ma­tion, but the re­al­i­ty is coral reefs over the last 50 years and ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue over the next 50 years are un­der­go­ing sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tions be­cause of cli­mate change.”

She said that as a child of the Caribbean, this was a heart­break­ing dev­as­ta­tion.

“This is not the time to throw in the tow­el; this is the time to dig deep to learn more about our ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment and un­der­stand adap­ta­tion for the sake of na­ture and our own well-be­ing.”

Di­rec­tor of the IMA, Dr Ava Max­am, added that coral reefs have far more use­ful­ness than just ab­sorb­ing high lev­els of car­bon and sup­port­ing di­verse ecosys­tems.

She ex­plained, “Re­search has al­so shown that, in ad­di­tion to stun­ning vi­su­als of coral reefs, many coral or­gan­isms have med­i­c­i­nal val­ue, in­clud­ing an­ti-can­cer and an­ti-bac­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties, mak­ing them valu­able for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal re­search.”

Max­am al­so cit­ed sta­tis­tics from the World Re­sources In­sti­tute (WRI), which first val­u­at­ed To­ba­go’s coral reefs in 2008. The es­ti­mate of coral reefs on the is­land came up to US$160 mil­lion every year in goods and ser­vices.

The WRI fur­ther stat­ed that To­ba­go’s coral reefs al­so pro­vide an es­ti­mat­ed US$18 mil­lion to US$33 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in shore­line pro­tec­tion.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the pub­li­ca­tion, Au­gus­tine re­vealed he would use the up­com­ing leg­isla­tive term to lob­by for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to po­lice its own ma­rine parks.

He not­ed this was part of the To­ba­go Bill, which was sent to Port-of-Spain five years ago, but the bill ul­ti­mate­ly failed in Par­lia­ment.

Au­gus­tine stat­ed, “One of the things I’ve al­ready asked of the new gov­ern­ment is that the To­ba­go Bill that we sent down to Par­lia­ment in No­vem­ber 2020 ask­ing that the THA be grant­ed sig­nif­i­cant leg­isla­tive teeth over the set­ting up of and polic­ing of ma­rine parks in To­ba­go; I have al­ready asked that be one of the ac­tion­able items be­tween June and De­cem­ber this year.”

His an­nounce­ment was met with ap­plause from those in at­ten­dance. He vowed once the THA is giv­en that au­thor­i­ty, they will move to pro­tect their ma­rine as­sets in a hasty man­ner.

When asked if this were some­thing he would sup­port, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swaraths­ingh said he would be meet­ing with THA of­fi­cials in the com­ing weeks where such top­ics will be dis­cussed.

Au­gus­tine would use his ad­dress to stress the ur­gent need to pro­tect To­ba­go’s coral reefs, warn­ing, “We can’t build enough re­tain­ing walls; we can’t put down enough gabion bas­kets or do enough revet­ments or pro­vide enough man-made strate­gies to do what coral reefs were nat­u­ral­ly built to do.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary said he hopes the new book in­stils a re­newed charge in the pop­u­la­tion “to do bet­ter by our reef sys­tems”.