NEPA monitoring marine parks

JIS

Monday, February 20, 2012

THE National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) has been carrying out several monitoring exercises at the Montego Bay, Negril and Ocho Rios marine parks under the Climate Change Adaptation for Disaster and Risk Reduction Project.

These parks comprise ecological structures such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, sandy shores, rocky shores and mangrove forests.

Speaking at a tour of the Montego Bay Marine Park last Wednesday, Project Coordinator at NEPA, Nichelle Oxford, said that the agency has been mandated to implement innovative ways of becoming more resilient to climate change, in light of the frequent occurrences of natural hazards.

She pointed out that climate change is likely to occur, and although it cannot be prevented, there are several ways of becoming more resilient to it, by monitoring coral reefs.

“We have installed four data loggers in the marine park protected area, and the purpose of these data loggers is to monitor temperature, because temperature rise is associated with climate change, which negatively impacts our coral reefs,” she explained.

Data loggers are devices that record temperature at different intervals, which are carefully monitored by NEPA. It also helps to detect incidences that are likely to happen.

“With this bit of information, we are able to determine the status of the reefs throughout the year, and are able to caution tour operators of which reef to avoid, to lessen the negative impacts caused by man made factors,” she noted.

Several artificial reefs have been put in place at the Montego Bay Marine Park, as well as the replanting of sea grass to further protect the nation’s shore line.

“We are committed to playing our part, which involves increasing the resilience of climate change to boost these areas,” she said.

Other components of the project involves the re-establishing of sand dunes, replanting of mangroves in degraded coastal areas such as the Palisadoes protected area, Portland Bight in Clarendon and Great Morass and Refuge Cay in St Thomas.