Diver inspecting the coral nursery.
COLE BAY–An unknown incident, more than likely involving a large vessel, caused significant damage to the Nature Foundation’s Coral Reef Restoration Programme. Inspection dives revealed that the two primary coral nursery structures sustained major damage, affecting some coral fragments.
Foundation staff moved the nursery to a safer location and replaced coral fragments at a new location. Nature Foundation started to populate its first coral nursery structures again after most of the previous coral nurseries were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017.
The Foundation has slowly started to implement its “Fragments of Recovery” coral restoration projects with installing the first coral nurseries in an attempt to repopulate hurricane-damaged reefs around the island with rare coral species.
“We were very distressed to see that we received such damage to our coral nursery, especially considering that we put so much hard work into getting our corals back up to speed,” said Nature Foundation manager Tadzio Bervoets.
The coral nursery project in St. Maarten used to be part of the three-year Restoration of Ecosystem Services and Coral Reef Quality RESCQ project funded by the European Union Best 2.0 Programme.
However, due to the effects caused by last year’s hurricanes the Nature Foundation had to step out of the project to focus on rebuilding and assisting nature recovery on the island.
“The team, under the leadership of Melanie [Meijer zu Schlochtern – Ed.], our project officer, worked hard to replace the nursery so – fingers crossed – that the coral will hold. In the meantime, we will try to ascertain what caused the damage to our post-Irma coral nursery,” Nature Foundation stated.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/79578-coral-reef-restoration-programme-damaged
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