The Coastal Water Quality Improvement Project (CWIP) was a 6-year bilateral development initiative between the Government of Jamaica (through the National Environment and Planning Agency, NEPA - the then NRCA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) designed to protect and improve the environmental quality of the country's coastal waters. CWIP commenced activities in January 1998 focusing on three work sites, Negril, Ochi Rios and Port Antonio. Activities are focused in five areas:

• Support community-based initiatives to address environmental concerns;
• Improve the operation and maintenance of municipal wastewater management systems;
• Improve environmental practices of industries and commercial establishments;
• Establish NGO-government partnerships to monitor coastal water quality; and
• Support improved coordination of coastal zone management activities.

The CCDC houses the dataset from the coastal water quality monitoring program.  CCDC has also designed a database to store fish catch dataset collected through the Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory and CWIP.  The dataset include fish species, number of fish caught, weight, length and fishing gear used.