The White River Fish Sanctuary in Ocho Rios, St. Ann, will be celebrating its sixth anniversary next month. I visited them with the team from Voices for Climate Change back in 2019, when we took an exciting boat trip to see the coral gardens planted in the sanctuary. The boundaries are marked with red and white metal posts, a total of 372 acres. The White River Fish Sanctuary is a non-governmental organization run by the White River Fishermen Association (WRFA) and White River Marine Association (WRMA – stakeholders). It is in the heart of a tourist resort, and their journey has been a challenging one.
Fast forward less than four years to late 2023, and Jamaica’s coral reefs are in crisis. They suffered a deadly bleaching event, putting the island at risk of greatly increased coastal erosion and reduced protection from the ever-increasing number of storms our region suffers. You can read more about the factors behind coral bleaching on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) website here. As UNEP notes:
Coral reefs’ extreme susceptibility to warming seas makes them one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate change
United Nations Environment Programme, Life Below Water
Felix Charnley is a young coral reef scientist and environmental activist at White River. Please read his comments below, and let them sink in. They are no exaggeration. And please look at the presentation given by the Sanctuary at the link below and on YouTube here (November, 2023).
Now a huge effort is ongoing, islandwide, to find the few corals that have survived the onslaught of bleaching, with a view to propagating these hardier creatures; this involves Felix, and other dedicated scientists, swimming over miles and miles of reef with camera in one hand and GPS in the other, and meanwhile talking to every fisher and diver to try to identify what they can salvage. The tracking of the remaining live corals is an exhausting exercise with perhaps only a partial prospect of some success; but it is absolutely necessary – unless we are going to give up on our environment altogether.
While the reef at White River is still there, for now, and is still providing habitat for the fish and lobsters within the Sanctuary, in years to come storms will break down the dead coral; and the few live corals remaining are now being besieged by fire worms and snails that eat it, among other predators. So, the question now is, what steps should be taken to preserve what is left?
I have not yet been able to obtain a copy of the speech made by the Minister Without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister who is responsible for the environment and climate change, Senator Matthew Samuda. I am not sure that he made any mention of this desperately urgent matter. I will take a look, and share it in full when I get the opportunity.
Meanwhile, if an urgent rescue mission is not undertaken now, Jamaica will simply have no coral reefs.
Coral apocalypse in Jamaica
In late 2023, Jamaica’s reefs were subjected to the deadliest coral bleaching event in history due to the longest and most severe heat spike on record resulting in a mass extinction event and the reversal of more than fifteen years worth of restoration efforts in the country.
Sea surface temperatures around the island consistently lingered above 29°C (which is the bleaching threshold) over the course of September, October and November. While coral bleaching is a stress response from which the corals can still recover, by the first week of October it was too late and almost all of Jamaica’s iconic, golden “elkhorn” and “staghorn” branching corals which are critical to ecosystem function, providing habitat for countless fish and crustacea, as well as shoreline protection and recreational diving and snorkeling, were dead. The latter has serious erosion and property loss and damage implications for beaches, coastal infrastructure including hotels, and entire communities and their livelihoods.
The White River Fish Sanctuary is working tirelessly to re-establish populations of Jamaica’s critical reef-building species by finding and flagging far-flung survivors up and down the coastal shelf with a view to propagating and ultimately cross-breeding these to develop stronger, more resilient genetic reserves.
“This is a needle in a haystack search mission but it’s this or nothing”, says Felix Charnley, the sanctuary’s coral reef scientist and marine consultant. “If you don’t find and salvage what’s left now, be prepared as an island to be left without any coral. It’s too late to save these reefs. 2023 showed us that. What we’re doing is endangered species conservation in the hopes that humanity can afford these life forms a more hospitable planet to survive on in a reasonable timeframe.”
Citizens must urge their governments to keep fossil fuels in the ground and invest in wartime-scale efforts to halve humanity’s footprint: an overwhelmingly exciting opportunity for circular economics, public transportation and careers in sustainable agriculture.
“These setbacks don’t make restoration attempts any less commendable. On the contrary they make them more essential. It’s just going to take a lot of long-distance swimming.”
A presentation given by the sanctuary on the island-wide rescue mission can be viewed here.
Contact: Felix Charnley
T: 876-861-8292
E: whiteriverfs@gmail.com
Jamaica’s Master Tourism Plan, quoted on the White River website, notes the following:
Tourism is thus in a two-way relationship with the environment. This two-way relationship places a heavy burden on tourism to manage the environment effectively.
Tourism Master Plan for Jamaica
Surely, with the health of our marine environment – and specifically our coral reefs – closely linked to tourism, this issue should be of more than passing interest not only to our tourism officials but to our decision makers in general. I am not aware of any major concerns being expressed. We need to wake up to the implications of this event, not far down the road. Some tourism interests are, indeed, aware: Big ups to the Sandals Foundation (which regularly funds environmental projects), Hermosa Cove, Jamaica Inn and Couples Resorts, who support the White River Fish Sanctuary.
After all, our mass market tourism model (we have our eggs in the one basket, tourism) focuses on our marine environment. Tourists must have a white beach to laze about on, and a range of water sports, including snorkelling, diving, and glass-bottom boat viewing to enjoy if they feel energetic. If we continue this way, the water sports section of every all-inclusive on the island might as well pack up.
And what is more, our fishers might as well pull up their boats and put their nets in storage.
Or are we planning to create artificial white sand beaches and fake coral reefs, to replace the natural ones? But wait… Aren’t we already going down that road?
