Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Dr An­jani Ganase has spent most of this year on the is­land of To­ba­go—div­ing off its reefs to re­search the state of its corals. Her pre­lim­i­nary find­ings sug­gest trou­bling news for To­ba­go’s coral reefs.

“Once we crunch the da­ta, we’ll def­i­nite­ly see a dip in the per­cent­age of coral cov­er again,” she said in an in­ter­view last week.

Ganase is a coral reef ecol­o­gist and a se­nior re­search of­fi­cer at the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA), a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ma­rine and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Pri­or to her re­search this year, the num­bers were al­ready con­cern­ing for Ganase and her team, with im­pli­ca­tions ex­tend­ing far be­yond To­ba­go’s reefs.

She said, “We cur­rent­ly have an av­er­age of 15 per cent coral cov­er. The IMA mon­i­tors 11 sites; some have as low as 10 per cent coral cov­er, while oth­ers are clos­er to 20 per cent. This is rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the av­er­age coral cov­er across the Caribbean. How­ev­er, it’s in a risky state. We are walk­ing on the edge of a knife.”

Coral cov­er refers to the per­cent­age of a reef’s sur­face cov­ered by liv­ing hard corals and is a pri­ma­ry in­di­ca­tor of reef health.

En­vi­ron­men­tal so­ci­ol­o­gist Kathryn Au­dro­ing has al­so spent much of this year speak­ing with res­i­dents across To­ba­go about the is­land’s reefs.

“In the words of some of the peo­ple I sur­veyed, it’s in a poor state, and most are con­cerned that it’s get­ting worse,” she said.

The im­por­tance of reefs

Coral reefs are cen­tral to To­ba­go’s iden­ti­ty, ex­ist­ing al­most side by side with the is­land’s coastal com­mu­ni­ties. Be­yond their nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to se­quester car­bon diox­ide, reefs pro­tect beach­es and coastal in­fra­struc­ture by re­duc­ing wave ac­tion and mit­i­gat­ing storm surge ero­sion. They al­so pro­vide habi­tat for count­less ma­rine species, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to bio­di­ver­si­ty.

Tourism has been an­oth­er ma­jor ben­e­fit. Glass-bot­tom boat tours al­low vis­i­tors to view the vi­brant un­der­wa­ter ecosys­tems, but reef op­er­a­tors are in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned as bleached corals re­place once-thriv­ing reefs.

Michael Frank, pres­i­dent of the Store Bay Reef Tour As­so­ci­a­tion, said the sit­u­a­tion is not dire yet. Ex­pe­ri­enced op­er­a­tors can still nav­i­gate ar­eas where coral bleach­ing has oc­curred and take tourists to thriv­ing coral zones.

How­ev­er, he warned: “The world’s tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing, stress­ing the ocean, which af­fects corals. It’s on­ly the be­gin­ning. The prob­lem is not on­ly lo­cal but al­so glob­al. It’s not an im­me­di­ate con­cern, but it’s a grow­ing threat, and in the next five or six years, if we don’t re­verse this course, it will be­come a prob­lem.”

Au­dro­ing sur­veyed over 300 peo­ple from 60 com­mu­ni­ties and found that To­bag­o­ni­ans have a strong un­der­stand­ing of their ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment and its con­nec­tion to dai­ly life, work, and recre­ation.

“Many re­port a strong de­pen­dence on the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment for work and un­der­stand its val­ue in frag­ile ecosys­tems like coral reefs, sea­grass­es, and man­groves. They know it’s cru­cial for tourism, fish­eries, and the func­tion­ing of ma­rine nurs­eries for young fish and oth­er ma­rine an­i­mals,” she said.

Signs of dan­ger

Ganase sees im­me­di­ate cause for con­cern. Be­tween 2023 and 2024, sev­er­al reefs were hit by mass bleach­ing events caused by ma­rine heat waves, with con­sec­u­tive sum­mers bring­ing wa­ter tem­per­a­tures too high for coral sur­vival. This fol­lows a sim­i­lar mass bleach­ing event in 2010, which she has al­so stud­ied.

“There was less bleach­ing in 2023, but be­tween Au­gust and No­vem­ber 2024, mass bleach­ing oc­curred through­out the reefs,” Ganase said. “We did see some re­cov­ery this year, but there was def­i­nite­ly a sig­nif­i­cant die-off.”

Sev­er­al threats con­tribute to the reefs’ pre­car­i­ous state.

Ganase ex­plained, “There’s cli­mate change, dis­ease, and a long his­to­ry of chron­ic stress­es from pol­lu­tion, poor fish­eries man­age­ment, and in­ad­e­quate over­sight.”

Au­dro­ing re­in­forced these con­cerns: “There’s a lack of en­force­ment of ex­ist­ing poli­cies and man­age­ment struc­tures. Peo­ple cit­ed garbage, pol­lu­tion runoff, coastal de­vel­op­ment, il­le­gal dump­ing, over-har­vest­ing, sar­gas­sum, spearfish­ing, noise and oil pol­lu­tion, and recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties like jet ski­ing as ma­jor con­cerns.”

As part of the IMA, Ganase has launched the Ma­rine Re­silience Ini­tia­tive (MARIN) To­ba­go project. The ini­tia­tive fo­cus­es on long-term man­age­ment of chron­ic is­sues and de­vel­op­ing adap­tive strate­gies to ad­dress fu­ture dis­tur­bances. “We face un­prece­dent­ed un­cer­tain­ty due to cli­mate change, but chron­ic is­sues re­main,” she said. “We need to build re­silience in the ma­rine ecosys­tem and the liveli­hoods that de­pend on it.”

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the sur­vival of To­ba­go’s reefs will de­pend not on­ly on pol­i­cy­mak­ers but al­so on the com­mu­ni­ties whose lives are in­ter­twined with these vi­tal ecosys­tems.