The Centre for Marine Sciences, UWI, Mona, has obtained funding from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica, (EFJ), to carry out research on the Rackham’s cay coral relocation monitoring project. The EFJ has agreed to provide approximately J$3.7m which will be used to conduct the monitoring programme. The project is scheduled to last for fourteen months and aims to monitor the survival, mortality and growth rates of transplanted coral units of the cay located near Kingston.
This is part of an effort to improve coral reef monitoring and reporting on the status of coral reefs in the countries of the northern Caribbean node of the global coral monitoring network.
The Centre for Marine Sciences recently completed two reef check monitoring surveys, the first in Negril, Jamaica and the second in Le Arcadian, Haiti.
The Negril monitoring training exercise started with a seminar in September conducted by Malden Miller of the United Nations Environment Programme. The exercise then shifted to Negril where the team carried out monitoring of some of Negril’s reefs.