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Real Danger to Kids by Clinton W. Pickering
Already the volcano has spread its mud, destroying acres of valuable agricultural land. The overflow has covered everything in its path. Mangrove trees have began to grow on the margins of the plateau as an adaptation to the new ecosystem. The emissions have altered the landscape. The mud volcano is active with constant emissions of bubbling hot water and soft clay. Fine sediments flow through surface cracks which form cones as they cool. For most of the time, the cones splutter with small spurts of mud. The cones are usually not more than three feet [1 metre] high. Though there is no immediate danger, devotees are not taking chances. The constant swelling of the mud domes and the increasing deposits around the orifices are a source of worry. The escape of methane gas from the subsurface is also a source of concern. Methane gas boils and churns clay and salt water, and ejects them as a slurry of fine solids. The outpourings may even submerge nearby homes, livestock and vegetation as in Piparo and Devil's Woodyard. There are about 20 mud volcanoes in Trinidad, including the recent active formation in the sea at Mayaro. The most visited are the active mud volcanoes in Piparo and Devil's Woodyard. The latter is past Princes Town through Indian Walk, and into Hindustan Road. The volcano in Devil's Woodyard erupted violently in 1852, seven years after the first wave of Indians came to Trinidad as indentured labourers in 1845. The volcano in Piparo is also located in South Trinidad near an exquisite Hindu temple that is also a sight to behold with its superb craftsmanship, fine details and extravagant interior. The volcano erupted in 1996, unleashing a tidal wave of mud that slowly submerged 15 houses. Annually, during the month of April, Hindus perform puja to placate the spirit of the volcano in Cedros from wreaking further destruction. They also express gratitude and appreciation that it has not done more damage. They know that scientists cannot accurately predict an eruption, and that government agencies can only put plans in place for an evacuation. The balka puja is a grand event in Cedros, attracting scores of religious adherents and curious onlookers for decades. Pilgrims and visitors drive one mile inside Columbia coconut estate, up steep winding slopes into forested land with wild trees and shrubs. Old folks travel up the mountain out of a sense of tradition. The journey to the hilltop is a metaphor for the ascent to spiritual enlightenment. The spluttering and bubbling of the volcano is a curious phenomenon which, for religious adherents, has a strong mystical appeal. Hindus have made this volcano the object of veneration through fear of its inexplicable natural power. They believe that Goddess Durga resides miles underground in a chamber fed by flows of magna from deep within the earth. Durga is believed to be the Mother of the Universe. She is perceived to be the power behind the work of creation, preservation and destruction of the world. Like native Indians in the early Americas, Indians in Trinidad revere a volcano as a sacred place and a veneration of nature. Some years ago, parents would take their children to have their first hair-cut near the mud mound. Hindus believe that a puja performed near the dome is the most effective way to communicate with god. The volcano is believed to respond immediately to human prayer and ritual. Hindus make an altar with the soft clay of a fresh eruption on the side of the plateau. On the altar, they make offerings [jagaway] of flowers, fruits, leaves, grains, water, etc. to Goddess Durga. In Hindu iconography, Durga is represented sitting on a lion, suggesting that she has complete control of dangerous forces. Hindus use the clay to make miniature murtis [statues], and the sick apply it to treat skin diseases. Nine women make offerings from a lota [brass jug] on a large bubbling cone. The pandit [priest] chants agnihotra mantras while a row of devotees touch the shoulder of one another. The ceremony climaxes with the planting of a jhandi [flagstaff] in the hole ("mouth") of a bubbling vent. Vegetarian meals, non-alcoholic drinks and fruits are served to all at the end of the event. Editor's Note: Dr Kumar Mahabir is a Professor at University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT),
The OAS and the Belize-based Climate Change Center will sign a collaborative agreement to that effect on April 9, committing to joint action. The scientific findings, including the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are of particular concern to Caribbean countries whose development over the past two decades has been severely disrupted by a variety of extreme weather events, especially floods, droughts and hurricanes. The prospect that the intensity, frequency and duration of such events will increase as a result of global climate change demands a prompt, strategic and collaborative response by those countries that are most vulnerable in concert with their development partners. It is against this background, and in furtherance of the mandates and responsibilities entrusted to the various organs of the OAS, including the Committee on Hemispheric Security, that the OAS and the Climate Change Center are proposing to collaborate on this venture. Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza will sign on behalf of the OAS General Secretariat, with Dr. Ken Leslie signing as Executive Director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center. In addition to the two signatories, the ceremony will feature brief remarks by Dr. Izben Williams, Permanent Representative of St. Kitts and Nevis to the OAS and Chairman of the Committee on Hemispheric Security and Ambassador Nestor Mendez, Permanent Representative of Belize to the OAS.
In the Cayman Islands, the international voice traffic was measured at 1 630 minutes per person, making it the world leader. An explanation for the exceedingly high volume can be traced to the fact that the Cayman Islands is a major international banking centre. In addition, the population of 45 000 is considered very small by any standards and the ratio of minutes for every resident would tend to be high. Grenadians too are among the world's most talkative telephone users. In its data book on information and communications technology (ICT), the World Bank said the average Grenadian spends 638 minutes calling overseas in a year. That's more than double the 279 minutes per person in international voice traffic recorded by the 296 million Americans in 2005 and the 233 minutes the per person made by the 2.7 million Jamaicans; the 236 minutes per person by the Italians; and the 293 by Austrians. Each Barbadian, on average, made at least ten hours of overseas telephone calls in 2005, the latest year for which the international financial institution in Washington had data. In 2000, the overseas calls amounted to 425 minutes for every man, woman and child in the country, skyrocketing to 611 minutes five years later. It's not difficult to figure out why Barbadians spend so many hours on the phone. For one thing, they have a reputation for being gossipers. For another, half of the population, 500 out of every 1 000, have access to telephone mainlines while 765 out of every 1 000 residents have cellphones. In essence, there are more phones in Barbados than there are people. The entire population of about 280 000 people has access to mobile phones, if they wish to have them. Bahamians too have an ongoing love affair with the overseas telephone, each talking for 587 minutes, down from 624 minutes recorded at the turn of the 21st century. The Bahamas was among the few countries that recorded a decline in international voice traffic between 2000 and 2005. No explanation was given for the drop. Reasons abound for the amount of time spent on the phone in the region. For one, in almost every household there is a close relative living in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands or in other Caribbean territories. For another, telephones saturate the islands. Then there is the prevalence of calling cards. At least 65 per cent of the people in Grenada have mobile phones while 309 out of every 1 000 have telephone mainlines. More than one cell In Jamaica, international voice traffic skyrocketed from 155 minutes per person in the year 2000 to 233 five years later. Like Barbados there were more mobile phones there than people in 2005, indicating that many Jamaicans have more than one cell. The astounding presence of cells in Jamaica is understandable. Only 129 mainlines were in operation for every 1 000 people three years. They now cover 95 per cent of the population. Trinidadians may live in CARICOM 's richest nation, but they don't enjoy that kind of extensive coverage. Slightly more than 25 per cent, 248 per 1 000 had mainlines while for every 1 000 citizens there were 613 cell phones. The average Trini makes about 381 minutes in overseas calls in a year. The ICT picture in the Caribbean looks like this: * Bermuda, Barbados, the Bahamas and Antigua are the leaders in connectivity to the worldwide web; *more than half of the population of Bermuda and Barbados has access to computers. *both Internet and telephone penetration and computer usage in the Caribbean are higher than in Africa, Asia and Latin America; *more than 90 per cent of the households in the English-speaking Caribbean have television sets, with the Bahamas and Antigua topping the list with 97 per cent of the households covered.
A release issued by the IDB in Washington said that the funds, to be administered by Guyana's Ministry of Agriculture, will be used by the Guyana government to promote the development of its nascent bio-energy sector through policy development, training, feasibility studies and incentives for private investment. "These grants will help the Government of Guyana to turn the country's extraordinary bio-energy potential into a reality," the release quoted IDB project team leader for technical cooperation Christiaan Gischler as saying. New jobs It noted too that "Guyana has ideal conditions to develop bio-energy alternatives that can lower its oil import bill while attracting investment to the agricultural sector and generating new jobs - all in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner." The grants comprise US$675,500 from the IDB's Japan Special Fund and US$250,000 from the IDB's Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Initiative Fund. The grants will finance institutional strengthening for the country's Agro-energy Board and technical support for the ongoing development of its national agro-energy policy and will be used to provide training for bio-energy technicians, operators and managers; as well as to finance field visits by foreign companies that want to explore investment opportunities in the bio-energy sector. The release said the grants will also be used to encourage private companies to conduct detailed feasibility and pre-investment studies in Guyana. In this regard, the IDB said that under a matching grant concept, the IDB grants will provide up to US$50,000 per project to companies that wish to study the feasibility of a specific investment proposal. The companies will be expected to provide counterpart funding equal to 75 percent of the grant value to cover the full costs of the studies. The IDB is of the view that the grants could help to jump-start private investment in the agro-energy sector by mitigating the pre-investment risk, Gischler said, noting that many companies have already expressed interest in the country's agro-energy sector and the bank was confident that studies would lead to concrete investment projects. Proposals received To date the government has received proposals from eleven companies. Ten are from eight countries and the other is local. These proposals are expected to be evaluated with assistance from the IDB grant funding and technical assistance from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The process of evaluating and implementing a comprehensive strategic plan to promote Guyana's potential for bio-energy investment and production is estimated to cost US$1.2 million with grant funding from the IDB and counterpart funding from the government, Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud told Stabroek News late last year. The proposals were in varying stages of development and the government needed additional information from the potential investors at the time. The number of investors grew from early August when President Bharrat Jagdeo had announced that six companies had submitted proposals with one submitting a proposed investment of US$600 million. The companies making proposals include the Canadian-registered company Agri Solutions Technologies which is already operating a bio-diesel facility using palm oil at Wauna in the Mabaruma District, Region One (Barima/Waini); and a locally-registered company, Sawarima Agro and Bio Energy Enterprise. The foreign companies include Global Energy Ventures a consortium involving capital from the US, Brazil and Jamaica, which has an interest in sugarcane cultivation for ethanol production; Bio-Capital out of Brazil; and the US companies Twin Lakes and Grynberg are also interested in cane cultivation for ethanol production. Zoom out of India is interested in cane cultivation for ethanol and bio-diesel production, while Integrated Bio-Energy Resources of the USA and Iberdrola of Spain are interested in oil palm cultivation for bio-diesel. AMCAR/Jatropha Inc out of France is also interested in bio-diesel. Anand Marketing Network from Canada proposes sweet potato cultivation for ethanol production. Canje Basin earmarked Meanwhile, the government has committed some 40,000 hectares of land in the Canje Basin, East Berbice/Corentyne for investment in the bio-fuel/agro-energy sector. The IDB in its release noted that in addition to promoting Guyana´s Agro-energy Policy and welcoming enquiries from investors, the Jagdeo administration has worked with the IDB to raise awareness of the agro-energy potential in the Caribbean by hosting the seminar entitled 'Expanding Bio-energy Opportunities in the Caribbean.' IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno took part in the seminar underscoring the priority that the bank is giving to Guyana's renewable energy efforts. On that occasion Moreno emphasized Guyana's outstanding bio-fuels potential while noting the possibility of cogenerating electricity with bagasse, a by-product of sugar and ethanol production plants. He said that preliminary IDB estimates indicated that Guyana could meet up to half of its electricity needs through cogeneration, substituting diesel and fuel oil currently used for electricity generation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing emissions Meanwhile, a study conducted by a team of researchers from Princeton University recently revealed that the growing demand for bio-fuels could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions as farmers clear forests and grassland to create more cropland. The study concluded that land use change reduces the benefits of bio-fuels because it would release carbon sequestered by the land into the atmosphere. Professor Tim Searchinger, one of the authors of the study, said increasing demand for food will put even greater pressures on farmers to convert land for agriculture. "There's already a carbon benefit being provided by land and previous analyses of the benefits of bio-fuels haven't taken that into account," he said. According to the team's calculations, bio-fuels produced from soybeans reduce emissions by 70% compared to regular fuel, but when land use change is factored in, this changed to a 50% increase in emissions. The study - first published in Science magazine - calculated that it could take decades for bio-fuels to pay back their carbon debt if forests and grasslands were converted to grow them or to grow the food crops displaced by bio-fuel crops. Searchinger recommended that national governments should stop setting mandatory levels of bio-fuel use, and should provide producers with incentives to get their bio-fuels from existing agricultural land. It was vital to find new ways to increase crop yields to meet demand for both food and bio-fuels, he said, adding that, "We are going to need more agricultural expansion to feed everybody and we are going to need big yield increases to keep the impact down. We need a massive worldwide strategy to boost yields using existing agricultural land." The Guyana government has emphasised that no agricultural lands in use would be put under cultivation for bio-fuel production and forests would not be felled for this purpose. (Miranda La Rose)
La Nina cool-water conditions in the Pacific and higher sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic are contributing to enhanced conditions for hurricane activity, Gray told Reuters at the US National Hurricane Conference. "We're expecting an above-average season," Gray said. "The big question we have is, are we going to raise the numbers from our December forecast? We might." "We're not going to lower the numbers," he said. The average six-month Atlantic hurricane season produces about 10 tropical storms and six hurricanes -- a standard that was blown out of the water in record-busting 2005, when 28 storms formed, including Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans.| The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season brought 14 tropical storms, of which six strengthened into hurricanes. The Colorado State team issues forecasts several times a year. In December, it said it expected the 2008 season starting June 1 to produce 13 tropical storms, of which seven would become hurricanes and three would be major hurricanes with winds of at least 111 mph (178 kph). Colorado State's forecasts have been well off the mark the past three years. Its next update on expectations for 2008 will be issued on April 9 at a conference in the Bahamas. Gray pioneered long-range hurricane forecasting, issuing his first seasonal prediction in 1984. Others followed, including the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and private risk assessors. The fierce storms have captured increasing attention from oil markets, insurance firms and commodities traders because of their impact on US Gulf of Mexico crude production and the devastating damage they can cause to buildings and crops. Hurricane experts believe the Atlantic is in an era of naturally heightened hurricane activity that began around 1995 and could last up to 40 years. Some -- not including Gray -- say global warming may also be causing more powerful hurricanes. Gray said he expected a weak to neutral La Nina condition -- a cooling of waters in the eastern Pacific that can enhance conditions for hurricane activity in the Atlantic. The water will be "on the cold side," he said. La Nina's opposite, El Nino, a warm-water phenomenon that acts to inhibit Atlantic hurricane formation, is not expected to appear during the 2008 season, he said. "Also, the sea surface temperatures in the eastern Atlantic particularly off Iberia and off northwest Africa, they are very warm, much like they were at this time in 1995 and 2005 when we had very active seasons," he said. Hurricanes gain strength from warm ocean water. Temperatures in those areas, which are where many storms form, have climbed from 0.3 to 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 0.9 degrees F) in the past few months, Gray said.
As a result, investors will now be obligated to pay for the ecosystem services produced by any rainforest. The deal which was drawn up by international law firm Stephenson Harwood comes in the wake of a pivotal year for the fate of forests, according to a release. It stated that the contribution of deforestation to runaway climate change has been recognised internationally and new measures to conserve forests are set to be included in a post-Kyoto framework after 2012. Announcing the Iwokrama initiative at the world's first biodiversity and Finance Conference in New York on Thursday, Canopy Capital Director Andrew Mitchell said, "The decision on forests at December's UN conference in Bali is a major step in tackling climate change, but it fails to reward countries such as Guyana that aren't cutting down their forests." As such it is anticipated that the deal will create an investment template for first-movers in an emerging market for ecosystem services which could serve to generate billions of dollars for developing nations, making it more valuable to keep their forests standing than to cut them down. According to information from Iwokrama, among the services that will not be paid for are rainfall generation, climate change regulation, biodiversity maintenance and water storage, and utilities with global significance which are vanishing, such as forests fall. A release stated that the transaction pioneers the use of risk capital to safeguard the services within the Iwokrama million-acre reserve which lies at the heart of the Guiana Shield and is one of the intact rainforest systems left in the world. The forests of the Guiana Shield generate rainfall that services the production of agricultural commodities throughout northern Latin America and the southern Caribbean. "Forests do much more for us than just store carbon. We should move beyond emission based trading to measure and place a value on all the services they provideThis initiative fits perfectly with Iwokrama's original mandate to demonstrate that conservation, environmental balance and sustainable economic activity can be mutually reinforcing," the release added. The move, the release also noted, will also ensure, with Commonwealth support for Iwokrama, that the world hears a knowledgeable and persuasive voice on a matter of growing international concern, according to Iwokrama's Chairman, Edward Glover. Accordingly, the release added that funds already secured from Canopy Capital will be used to continue the management of the Iwokrama forest in accordance with its philosophy of conservation through sustainable best practice, providing livelihoods and business partnerships for the 7,000 people living in the forest and the surrounding areas.
Technical officer with the National Conservation Commission (NCC), Ryan Brathwaite, said it was a part of their reforestation programme. "Deforestation is a big problem in Barbados, as when people build, they tend to just clear the land rather than build around existing vegetation. Then they plant a small flower garden," he said. Oxygen Brathwaite added he had no problems with flower gardens, but they could not replace trees in terms of oxygen production or soil conservation. As for the number of trees they intended to plant, he said it was calculated there were around 80 000 people under 18 and so they wanted to get the youth involved. "Youth make a greater impact and show more enthusiasm, and, as they grow, we hope this line of thinking would continue in their minds to do more for the environment," he said. All seedlings and cuttings that will be used for the reforestation will be sourced locally. Propagation Brathwaite was speaking to the Press on Wednesday at a seminar on Capacity Building For Youth In Sustainable Land Management at the Dining Club, Manor Lodge, St Michael. In his remarks, NCC general manager Keith Neblett said the project included two phases: one which would expose youth to the importance of vegetation and propagation techniques; and the other the collection of plant material which would be planted and monitored. Several schools were involved, including The Rock Christian School, Roland Edwards Primary, Welches Primary, Alleyne School and Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic. (CA)
The quake had a magnitude of 4.1 on the Richter Scale and had a depth of 87 kilometres. It was located at latitude 14.59 degrees north and longitude 60.63 west. The National Emergency Management Organisation received reports that the event was felt in the following areas - Gros Islet; Castries Waterfront; Arundelle Hill; Vigie; Morne Fortune and Bonne Terre. Residents in the communities of Corinth; Union; Marchand; White Rock; Cap Estate; Vide Boutielle and Fond Assau indicated to Caribbean Net News that they also the earthquake. On March 9, 2008 the island was rocked by a quake measuring 3.2 on the Richter Scale.
The amount of rubble on the island's west coast suggests the coral took a heavy pounding, said Leo Brewster, director of Barbados' Coastal Zone Management Unit, who was organizing dives later this week to survey the damage. ''We think it's going to be pretty extensive,'' Brewster said. ''I think we're going to see it across the Caribbean.'' The waves, reaching as high as an estimated 30 feet, lashed coastlines from Guyana to the Dominican Republic last week as a large low-pressure system idled off the northeastern United States. At their peak on Thursday morning, a buoy north of the U.S. Virgin Islands recorded swells of 15 feet the highest since 1991, said Shawn Rossi, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service in San Juan. Several countries reported flooding in coastal areas. In Barbados, the white coral washed up in chunks as heavy as seven pounds, generally healthy but with their polyps rubbed away by the rough surf, Brewster said. Reef-building coral provide a habitat for thousands of marine creatures but have been dying off across the Caribbean due to coastal pollution, overfishing and disease blamed on rising sea temperatures.
During last year February, 'Bird watch', one of the premier bird watching magazines, published an article on Guyana that said, "With such a wealth of birds, combined with an unrivalled spirit of both adventure and hospitality, it seems very soon that Guyana is destinedto become well and truly established as a first-class birding destination. "One of the challenges noted in the country was the fact that there is a low population density. Nonetheless, there are millions of acres of virtually untouched rainforest, a range of ecosystems with a diverse flora and fauna species estimated to be in excess of 200 mammals, 800 reptiles and amphibians, 6,500 plants and more than 815 species of birds." According to USAID, Guyana has all the necessary components of a great eco-tourism destination, but lacks the international recognition, coupled with the fact that there is limited tourism infrastructure. In 2006, USAID partnered the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA), tour operator Wilderness Explorers, the Guyana Amazon Tropical Birds Society, and local tourism suppliers to launch the Birding Tourism programme. The programme is a market-led approach to develop Guyana's birding tourism sector and increase overall tourist arrivals and revenue for the country. It targets international tour operators, bird watchers and media, while assisting local tourism suppliers. Bird watchers were identified as an ideal niche market, one which has been touted time and time again by the Minister of Tourism, Manniram Prashad. According to Prashad, 'birders' more than likely are the ones who have the time, money and willingness to travel to isolated destinations in search of their passion. Among the birding enthusiasts that travel to Guyana the Cock-of-the-Rock was the most sought after bird in Guyana. One such visitor, who was in Guyana with the Clipper Adventurer cruise ship had said, "To see the Cock-of-the-Rock at any time during the trip would be the climax of my vacation." Simon Papp of the Bird Watch magazine records on the magazine's website that, for the uninitiated Neotropical birder, cotingas are among the most sought-after families, with certain representatives among the most outrageously colourful of the continent's many birds. Perhaps the best-known of the 70-odd species are the two types of Cocks-of-the-Rocks. The range of Guianese Cock-of-the-Rock birds encompasses much of western Guyana, and we couldn't have chosen a more stunning location for our first encounter with the species.
The estimate is made by US scientists poring over the fate of the Caribbean monk seal, a fish-loving mammal driven to extinction in 1952. Historical records from the 17th and 18th century show there were huge numbers of monk seals, distributed among 13 colonies across the Caribbean. They were so plentiful that some ships' maps of the West Indies even noted particularly dense locations of seals. Alas for Monachus tropicalis, colonisation of the West Indies unleashed unbridled hunting, the bounty being seal oil that was used to grease machinery in sugar plantations. Towards the end of the 19th century, the seals were reduced to a final redoubt of a few atolls -- and their worst enemy became natural history museums and private collectors keen for monk seal skeletons. In one disastrous episode, a 1911 expedition to Mexico by natural-history enthusiasts killed 200 seals, leaving just a handful alive, and driving the depleted population further towards extinction. In a study published on Wednesday in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, oceanographers Loren McClenachan and Andrew Cooper perform a heroic act of biostatistics in recreating the life and sad demise of the seal. They calculate that, before the massacre, between 233,000 and 338,000 monk seals lived in the Caribbean. Such a huge population could only survive, of course, provided there was a huge supply of food. At a rough estimate, each adult seal would eat 245 kilos (539 pounds) of fish per year, and a juvenile seal 50 kilos, say McClenachan and Cooper. "The biomass of free fish required to sustained the estimated population of historical monk seals is four to six times greater than the average Caribbean reef, which exceeds that found on the most pristine Caribbean coral reef today and is in the same range of the most pristine reefs" in the remote Pacific, their paper says. The study gives a crucial pointer about the pace of degradation of Caribbean coral reefs, where the biggest problem has been overfishing. "Realistic construction of these past ecosystems is critical to understanding the profound and long-lasting effect of human hunting on the functioning of coral reef systems," they write. Extinction of the monk seal also had a huge knock-on effect across the Caribbean's food web. Removal of a major predator allowed some species of fish to expand at the expense of others, eventually transforming the picture of biodiversity.
Earthrace is an incredible 78ft wave-piercing trimaran powerboat that runs exclusively on 100% biodiesel. The boat will start an attempt to break the round the world speed record on 29th March, from Sagunto in Spain. As part of the crew, Tino, age 32, will travel half the time as part of the four-person ground crew, changing place along the route with the second race engineer, Mark Russell, from London, UK . The not for profit project is also run as a carbon neutral enterprise, making it one of the world's most environmentally-friendly powerboats. The volunteer crew aim to secure the world speed record to create greater awareness of biofuel from sustainable sources as part of the solution to counter damage to the environment through fossil fuels, and to promote the need for everyone to lead sustainable lives. Tino joined Earthrace in November 2007; among his responsibilities are the installation and maintenance of the new Cummins Mercruiser engines and ZF Marine Gearboxes during the pre-record refit. He has a background in automotive engineering with a keen interest in racing. In Guyana he was the workshop manager for Central Garage and wrote his Masters thesis on the thermal efficiency of bio fuels for race cars. The other crew members are: Boat crew: Skipper, Pete Bethune (New Zealand ); Engineer, Mark Russell ( UK and USA ); Cameraman, Rob Drewitt (UK and Spain ); Earthrace mascot, Eartha (non domicile anywhere). Ground crew: CEO and sponsorship manager, Fiona Clark (UK); Operations Manager, Adrian Erangey (Ireland). They will travel ahead of the boat to ensure fuel and supplies are waiting at each of the fuel stops around the world. Base crew: PR and media, Bev Bailey (UK); Administrator in Spain, Karoline Romanek ( Hungary ); Administrator in London , Ali Bradshaw (UK); Administrator in NZ, Sharyn Bethune (NZ). The current world record holder is British boat 'Cable and Wireless Adventurer' who took the record in a time of 75 days, ten years ago, in 1998. Since then, there have been five other attempts, including the first by Earthrace which took place in 2007 but which was stopped after storm damage sustained by bad weather in the Mediterranean. You can follow Earthrace as she travels around the globe in real time by going to www.earthrace.net and clicking on the 'Where is Earthrace' globe. High resolution, copyright free photographs and video footage is available to download from the 'News and Media' page on www.earthrace.net.
The staghorn and elkhorn corals grow about 10 times faster than any other in the Caribbean and reproduce in part by breaking into bits for easy ocean spread. Ken Johnson, who led the study published in the journal Science, said researchers had found that the staghorn and elkhorn coral were not that important until about 1 million years ago, when half the Caribbean coral species went extinct. Johnson said one reason they quickly became dominant was they may have been able to keep up with rapid sea level rise by growing quickly, Johnson said. And if sea levels rise as predicted in the coming centuries, they may have to reprise this role. "These are the species that are going to help coral reefs keep up with sea level change," Johnson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a telephone interview. Coral reefs, delicate undersea structures resembling rocky gardens that are made by animals called coral polyps, are important nurseries and shelters for fish and other sea life. They are also considered valuable protection for coastlines from high seas, a critical source of food, important for tourism and a potential storehouse of medicines for cancer and other diseases. But researchers say overfishing, climate change and human development are threatening reefs worldwide. In the Caribbean, an added concern is that the reefs are especially sensitive because they are dominated by just two species, Johnson said. "If these two species die out and become extinct, the Caribbean is in trouble," he said. The researchers produced their conclusions by using fossils to compare changes in coral diversity and reef development in the Caribbean over the past 28 million years. They showed that the characteristics of a dominant species were more important than the simple number of species, a finding that can better
The report, entitled, 'The World's Mangroves 1980 to 2005', acknowledges that afforestation and reforestation activities have taken place in Guyana. But it says also that all South American countries with the exception of Guyana have at least one Ramsar mangrove site, indicating added political will to protect these habitats and their environmental richness. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty providing for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and judicious use of wetlands and their resources. Guyana is still to sign on. "More efforts could be undertaken at the national and regional levels to implement appropriate strategies and effectively protect these ecosystems," the report points out. It further states that for Guyana, updated inventories would contribute greatly to a better estimate of the extent of mangroves. Awareness is slowly building among coastal residents as to the importance of mangroves to sea defence and work at the level of government is progressing apace in Guyana's drive to regenerate and conserve mangrove stands along the coastlands. The FAO states that the world has lost around 3.6 million hectares of mangroves since 1980, equivalent to an alarming 20 per cent loss of total mangrove area, according to a recent mangrove assessment study. However, the study also indicates that the rate of mangrove loss is slowing around the world. According to the report, the total mangrove area has declined from 18.8 million hectares in 1980 to 15.2 million in 2005, according to the report. "There has, however, been a slowdown in the rate of mangrove loss: from some 187,000 hectares destroyed annually in the 1980s to 102,000 hectares a year between 2000 and 2005, reflecting an increased awareness of the value of mangrove ecosystems," the FAO said. Although Guyana has commenced pilot projects across the country for the regeneration of mangroves, a lot is still to be done on the social side of things as it relates to people squatting on mangrove lands. Vegetate An official at the Sea Defence Division of the Ministry of Works, Geoffrey Vaughn noted that people still continue to live illegally on some of the dams where the mangroves should be freely allowed to vegetate. He said that apart from the European Union funding through the Eighth European Development Fund (EDF) for shore zone management, the government is getting some amount of funding from the World Bank for the regeneration of mangroves. "We just did a socio-economic study of the project areas under the Eighth EDF and we intend to look at the findings and see how we will proceed," Vaughn said, adding that the project areas included some villages along the Corentyne Coast, West Coast Demerara and some sections of the East Coast Demerara. The government has included in the 2008 Budget an allocation of $2.2 billion for the construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of sea defences and will include mangrove regeneration. Under this programme, government will commence its shore zone management, which envisages the cultivation of mangrove plantations, in appropriate locations, to be utilised as natural sea defence barriers. These works will augment additional works being done under other programmes on the sea defence. In Berbice, the loss of mangrove forests was for the most part attributable to the actions of humans. However, the depletion in the Essequibo was found to be naturally occurring. On a visit to the Corentyne during mid-2007, this newspaper learnt that mangroves were still being burnt and used to build roads. Personnel from the Sea Defence Division on the Essequibo Coast had told this newspaper last year that there is a 20-year cycle of erosion for the mangrove plants, during which they disappear for a while and then return. At Westbury, Bounty Hall and Better Success on the Essequibo Coast, there was erosion in some areas, while in others the foliage of the mangroves was healthy. The FAO cited high population pressure, the large-scale conversion of mangrove areas for shrimp and fish farming, agriculture, infrastructure and tourism, as well as pollution and natural disasters as the major causes for the destruction of mangroves.
Barrick plans to spend about US$2.6 billion (¤1.7 billion) on the Pueblo Viejo mine in what will be the largest private investment in Dominican history, President Leonel Fernandez said. A Barrick spokesman said construction will cost about US$2.7 billion (¤1.8 billion) over three and a half years and operations would begin in 2011. The company and government have agreed in principle to share the cost of cleaning up acid-filled rivers and fields of mineral waste left behind by a Dominican state-run company's previous activity at the site, Barrick spokesman Vince Borg told The Associated Press. Details about paying for the cleanup, which Barrick estimates will cost at least US$100 million (¤67 million), are still to be worked out, Borg said. Barrick estimates that the mine will yield 20.4 million ounces of goald, along with more than 400 million pounds of copper and more than 100 million ounces of silver. Massive investment The mine, located in pine-filled mountains north of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, will be built with a 40 per cent stake by Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc. Fernandez announced the project during his annual Independence Day address to Congress, his last before facing re-election in May. "This will be the largest investment ever realised in the history of the Dominican Republic," Fernan-dez said to applause. Barrick President and CEO Greg Wilkins praised the decision in a statement. "We are very pleased with the progress made by our employees, our partner Goldcorp Inc, and importantly, the Government of the Dominican Republic," Wilkins said
The Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are scheduled to arrive in T&T on March 3, as part of a Caribbean tour. Director of the Trust, Gerald McFarlane said staff was busy preparing for the Royal couple's visit. "We look at it as an opportunity to highlight and raise awareness about the state of the coral reefs not only in Tobago but the region," he said. "We will be displaying the various operations of the Buccoo Reef Trust, our research, education and conservation efforts." The Trust is a non-profit organisation, created in 1999, to assist in addressing the threats facing Tobago's marine environment and to explore opportunities for the sustainable development of marine tourism, fishing and aquaculture in the Caribbean region as a whole. Just about 150 persons, including key partners of the Trust, will be invited to be part of the visit and to also witness the launch of a fundraising project for the establishment of the Tobago Marine Research Centre . One of the main areas of the Trust's work is naturally, Tobago's popular Buccoo Reef-a long, breathtaking curve of coral reef stretching from Pigeon Point to the Bon Accord lagoon. The reef is protected but pollution and coral bleaching has, for some time, been a serious threat. Another of the Trust's directors, Dr Owen Day, said in 2005 Tobago's coral reefs suffered a significant amount of mortality. But damage to reefs began more than three decades ago according to Tobagonian Carlos Dillon, whose father Solomon is said to have taken the first boat ride to the Buccoo Reef in 1934. Dillon, 70, who managed the Mt Irvine Bay Hotel for several years and who has been significantly involved in the development of tourism in Tobago, said the true beauty of the reef was seen before the 1980s. "A Canadian Navy ship ran aground in the Buccoo Reef and my father took some people out there to the shipwreck," Dillon recalled last week in a telephone interview. "He then made his living taking people out to the Reef which was really beautiful in those days. I grew up in Buccoo so I was able to go out to the reef often, when the colourful tropical fishes were many. The reef was also brilliant in its colour with many sea fans and brain corals," he said. He explained that by the late 1970s, the reef began its gradual demise. Even as Dillon laments the degration of the Buccoo Reef from its once pristine state, the future for Caribbean corals is on the whole, a story of woe. The first in-depth analysis of 2005's widespread coral bleaching in the Caribbean, contained in a study entitled The Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005, reports that that was the year of the most extreme coral mortality to hit the Wider Caribbean (including Atlantic) coral reefs. Many Caribbean reefs lost up to 80 per cent of their coral cover during this time. The causes included climate related factors prior to 2005, but most of the coral losses were due to direct human impacts such as over-fishing, excess sediment input, increases in harmful run-offs from agriculture and domestic sewage, and direct damage to reefs during development. Tobago was one of the worst hit Caribbean islands where reefs suffered considerable mortality, with 73 per cent of all Colpophyllia and Diploria colonies dying. Scientists have warned that events like 2005 are expected to occur more frequently by the 2030s. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that human-induced climate change will warm the world by 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celcius by the year 2100. This warming will affect most of the wider Caribbean Sea making years like 2005 more common and more devastating for coral reefs," said authors of the report Clive Wilkinson and David Souter. They also said that increasing acidity in the seawater with the solution of more carbon dioxide will result in slower growth of corals that are trying to recover from bleaching and other disturbances. "The latest prediction is for an increase in the frequency of more damaging Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean that will probably cause significant damage to the coral reefs and the communities that depend upon them," the authors said. The report warns that action must be taken now for coral reefs to survive. "A dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the next 20 years will be critical to control further warming and dangerously high CO2 levels that will probably reduce the robustness and competitive fitness of corals and limit the habitats for many other organisms living on Caribbean coral reefs." Launch of the report on January 24 marked the beginning of the International Year of the Reef 2008, a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the value of coral reefs and the threats facing them. Apart from being a vital part of the marine ecosystem, coral reefs generate huge amounts of money. Caribbean coral reefs provide an estimated US$3.1 billion to $4.6 billion per year from fisheries, dive tourism and shoreline protection services, the report noted
Oil spills, over-fishing, pollution from ships and climate change is killing substantial marine life. Oyster and seagrass beds, mangroves, fisheries and coral life are all disappearing; trawlers kill hatchlings by the thousands; birds and whales are struck by ships in what used to be open water but is now playing grounds for wealthy yatchies and oil companies. The research findings of the global study were published in the February 15 issue of Science magazine. The study was conducted at the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California. Other seas said to be suffering the same fate as the Caribbean Sea are the North Sea, the South and East China Sea, the seas along the east coast of North America and the Mediterranean Sea. Kim Selkoe, a research scientist and co-author of the study working out of Hawaii said over 80 percent of the world's seas are fished and young aquatic life has no where to hide from the nets and harpoons of marine based entrepreneurs. "The other really surprising thing to me, from what our fishing data showed is that 80 per cent of the world's ocean is fished. There's nowhere left for the fish to hide...fishing boats are just really everywhere," she said. Locally, the Cropper Foundation, a local non profit organisation which has done and published extensive research on the Caribbean Sea, has shown the clear link between the ecosystem and the economy, demonstrating that while the ecosystem is being destroyed, so too are certain economies. The shortage of seafood and the depletion of the fisherman's source of income is just one economic side effect of the Caribbean Sea's degradation. In the project report for the Caribbean Sea Ecosystem Assessment, the foundation found that "despite their significant value to the current and future well being of these (Caribbean) states, the ecosystem goods and services provided by the Caribbean Sea are under threat." For environmentalist Prof Julien Kenny, pollution is the price to be paid for industrialisation. "Even with education of the people, half will comply and half will continue to pollute. Pollution is one of those things you expect as countries become more industrialised," Kenny said in a brief interview with the Sunday Express. "Significantly lessening pollution means changing human behaviour and that's a very hard thing to get done," he added. Some activists believe the fight to save the earth starts with legislation to govern the countries' coastal areas and for better policing of local waters. The Cropper Foundation notes that "the Caribbean Sea is used and impacted by many states which lie outside the geographical boundaries ... through leisure, trading and transportation activities," and that despite the formulation of fisheries legislation in all of the islands, "unregulated exploitation of limited fish stocks has continued unabated."
Joining the conference live from Bonaire via telephone were Lieutenant Governor Herbert Domacasse, Director of Tourism Corporation Bonaire Ronella Tjin Asjoe-Croes, Director of STINAPA Elsmarie Beukenboom, and key stakeholders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who were recently in Bonaire conducting research. In 1997, Bonaire became IYOR's first partner in the Caribbean to establish a comprehensive plan dedicated to executing a program of public education about coral reefs, assessing the conditions of coral reefs and collaborating with local communities and other reef managers to develop and implement plans for the use of irreplaceable reef resources. During that year Bonaire also hosted the International Year of the Reef's inaugural Dive Festival event. As a focal point destination for the 2008 celebration of IYOR, Tourism Corporation Bonaire (TCB) has joined forces with the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL), Earth Echo International, STINAPA and NOAA to execute a program that will continue the work that the Island began eleven years ago. On January 7, NOAA began a mapping project, titled "Exploring Coral Reef Sustainability with New Technologies" that will create a baseline for which all other Caribbean reefs will be compared. Bonaire is noted for having the most pristine coral reef environment in the Caribbean with the highest percent of coral cover and the lowest percent of algal cover. NOAA's team of experts are conducting research using autonomous underwater vehicles and technical diving to explore greater depths than can be reached with conventional compressed air scuba diving. NOAA completed their research on January 30, 2008. For more information, visit http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/08bonaire/welcome.html. As part of the IYOR celebration, STINAPA recently announced the designation of two fish protected areas on Bonaire's reef to encourage the population growth of large fish species. The locations were selected by a delegation including government officials and local fisherman using criteria that included the sites containing significant coral coverage and being easy to patrol by the Marine Park. Later this year, STINAPA will begin giving free reef ecology courses for residents and interested visitors. For more information, visit www.stinapa.org. On January 31, Tourism Corporation Bonaire and STINAPA hosted an International Year of the Reef ceremony at Wilhelmina Park where Government officials to announce the Island's slogan for IYOR, "Bonaire, Leading By Example." Additionally, the first of twelve paintings created by school children with an IYOR theme was unveiled. Each of the twelve paintings will be on display throughout the year at various locations for residents and visitors to enjoy. The Bonaire Hotel and Tourism Association also celebrated IYOR during their 11th Annual Awards Ceremony on January 24, 2008. Guests were asked to dress in blue and green shades that represent the colors of the ocean. Other IYOR activities taking place on Bonaire this summer during Bonaire Dive Into Summer 2008 include: International Year of the Reef Environmental Project: The Coral Reef Alliance, STINAPA, Earth Echo and TCB will work together to develop a summer-long overarching ecology project that will be launched during IYOR week, continued throughout the summer with monthly updates during each showcase week, and conclude during Love Our Planet Week with a press conference. International Year of the Reef Week: Taking place June 21-28, IYOR week will feature guest speakers Jan and Alexandra Cousteau from Earth Echo International who will give seminars and lead dives, and experts from CORAL that will give workshops. Love Our Planet Week: In conjunction with Clean Up the World Weekend, Love Our Planet Week will take place September 20-27 and will feature interactive presentations, activities and fish counts lead by CORAL representatives.
Bonaire's reef will now become the benchmark for which all other coral reefs will be compared, given that research has shown Bonaire as having the highest percentage of coral cover and the lowest percentage of algal cover compared to other Caribbean reefs. Additionally, an official study revealed that Bonaire is inhabited by more species of fish than any other Caribbean island. To collect further benchmarking data, NOAA initiated an Ocean Explorer signature exploration titled "Bonaire 2008: Exploring Coral Reef Sustainability with New Technologies," which took place January 7-30, 2008. The exploration was conducted by a team of researchers and scientists from the College of William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the University of Delaware and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography are leading the expedition with the help from STINAPA, the organization that oversees the Bonaire National Marine Park, where the expedition is taking place. The expedition consisted of mapping Bonaire's reef using methods beyond the capabilities of conventional compressed air scuba diving including technical diving with mixed gasses and using three autonomous underwater vehicles to explore greater depths, where little to no survey work has previously been conducted. This unique mapping of the biological and physical environment will document patterns of biodiversity in shallow and deep parts of the reef.
The finding by the team from University College London is a contentious one in the debate over how climate change affects weather and, especially, storms. "A 0.5 degree C increase in sea surface temperature is associated with a 40 percent increase in hurricane frequency and activity," the British researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The team showed ocean warming is directly linked to the frequency, strength and duration of hurricanes, said Adam Lea, the research scientist who co-led the study. The study, which did not look at whether greenhouse gases linked to global warming played a role in increasing water temperature, will help scientists better predict how warmer oceans might affect hurricanes, he added in a telephone interview. "It is important that future climate models are able to reproduce the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane activity," Lea said. "If you are trying to predict some of the impacts of global warming you need to have that kind of sensitivity." Hurricanes feed on warm water, leading to conventional wisdom supported by some recent research that global warming could be revving up more powerful storms. US researchers, however, last week challenged this view, saying global warming could reduce the number of hurricanes hitting the United States with warmer waters resulting in atmospheric instabilities that prevent storms from forming. Atlantic storms play a pivotal role in the global energy, insurance and commodities markets, particularly since the devastating 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, which hammered US oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. The British team looked at storms that formed in the tropical North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico -- a region that produced nearly 90 percent of the hurricanes that struck the United States between 1950 and 2005. Lea and his colleague Mark Sanders at University College London built a statistical model based on local sea surface temperature and wind to replicate hurricane activity over the past 40 years. This allowed them to remove the effects of wind to determine the sole impact of sea surface warming. "We are just linking how much activity you get for a specific temperature rise," he said. "The results ... indicate that local sea surface warming was responsible for 40 percent of the increase in hurricane activity relative to the 1950-2000 average between 1996 and 2005," the researchers' report said.
During the last 50 years many Caribbean reefs have lost up to 80 percent of their coral cover, damaging or destroying the main source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people, said the report, prepared by a team of scientists and experts at the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. The study was jointly sponsored by UNESCO and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Coral-based ecosystems are extremely sensitive to temperature increases, which have led over the last 50 years to massive bleaching -- affecting up to 95 percent of the reefs around some islands, including the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, and the French West Indies. 2005 was the warmest year since records were first kept in 1880, and global warming is likely to increase in years to come, climate scientists have warned. The same year also saw 26 tropical storms severe enough to merit names, including 13 hurricanes that piled on additional damage, according to Clive Wilkinson, who oversaw the research effort. The loss of coral reefs in not just a disaster for biodiversity, but for local economies as well. The World Resources Institute estimates that the Caribbean region -- host to 10 percent of the world's coral -- stands to lose 95 to 285 million euros (140 to 420 million dollars) annually if current trends continue. Worldwide, nearly 500 million people depend on healthy coral reefs for sustenance, coastal protection, renewable resources, and tourism. Of those, some 30 million of the world's poorest denizens depend on the reefs for food. Recent studies have shown that human settlement, especially coastal development and agriculture, poses a major threat to fragile coral ecosystems. Fully two-thirds of the world's coral reefs are at risk, the report said. The only long term solution for restoring reefs to full health is bringing world temperatures down through a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and curtailing the impact of pollution, the study suggested. The report marks the beginning of the International Year of the Reef 2008, a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the value of coral reefs and the threats they face. New gas finds off Trinidad by Canadian exploration company
Published on Thursday, January 24, 2008 Email To Friend Print
Version The company, Canada's No. 4 integrated oil exploration and refining firm, said its Cassra well, drilled in 1,378 feet of water north of the Caribbean island of Tobago, found a natural gas field that Petro-Canada said could contain between 600 million cubic feet and 1.3 trillion cubic feet of gas. The well flowed at 23 million cubic feet of gas per day while being tested. The company currently produces 65 million cubic feet of gas a day in Trinidad and Tobago. Cuba bans marine turtle hunt in bow to conservation HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuba has banned the hunting of marine turtles endangered in the Caribbean by the illegal trade in shells used to make combs, an official said on Tuesday. The decision was applauded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
as a lifeline to all turtle species hatching on beaches throughout
the Caribbean, but above all the critically endangered hawksbill
turtle. Hawksbill turtle laying its eggs. AFP PHOTO For many years, Cuba had a legal fishery quota of 500 hawksbills a year to keep up its export of turtle shells, but has finally acted on the pleas of conservationists. Two fishing communities that still hunted turtles, Nuevitas in Camaguey province and Cocodrilo on the Isle of Youth, will get funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to find alternative sources of income and modernize their fishing fleets. Fishermen will be retrained and engaged in the protection of turtles and their nests, the WWF said in a statement. The turtles are threatened by the loss of nesting and feeding habitats, egg collection, entanglement in fishing gear, as well as climate change and pollution. But the main threat comes from the continuing illegal trade in tortoise shells. Subscribe to our daily news headlines
The company did not disclose the size of the find but said that the "Victory" well had an estimated flowing rate of over 100 million metric cubic feet per day (mmscf/d) of natural gas and is condensate rich. It is located approximately three miles from an underwater connection to a pipeline which would bring the gas to shore. The news was announced yesterday by Canadian Superior Energy Inc. "We are pleased to announce the discovery of natural gas on our first well offshore Trinidad. We have just finished the successful flow testing of the first zone to be completed on our "Victory" well, which is part of an initial three well exploration programme offshore Trinidad on our "Intrepid" Block 5(c), said Canadian Superior's chairman Greg Noval. "We have just completed the extended flow testing of the first zone to be tested in the well which was flowed on a restricted flow basis with high pressures and flowed with measured flow rates averaging between 40 and 45 mmscf/d. The well also tested high gravity condensate of approximately 30 bbl per mmscf of gas produced.
It is well acknowledged that coral reefs are declining worldwide but the driving forces remain hotly debated, said author Camilo Mora at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. In the Caribbean alone, these losses are endangering a large number of species, from corals to sharks, and jeopardising over four billion dollars in services worth from fisheries, tourism and coastal protection, he added. The continuing degradation of coral reefs may be soon beyond repair, if threats are not identified and rapidly controlled, Mora said. This new study moves from the traditional localized study of threats to a region-wide scale, while simultaneously analyzing contrasting socio-economic and environmental variables, he added. The study monitored coral reefs, including corals, fishes and macroalgae, in 322 sites across 13 countries throughout the Caribbean. The study was complemented with a comprehensive set of socio-economic databases on human population density, coastal development, agricultural land use and environmental and ecological databases, which included temperature, hurricanes, productivity, coral diseases and richness of corals. The data were analyzed with robust statistical approaches to reveal the causes of coral reef degradation in that region. The study showed clearly that the number of people living in close proximity to coral reefs is the main driver of the mortality of corals, loss of fish biomass and increases in macroalgae abundance. A comparative analysis of different human impacts revealed that coastal development, which increases the amount of sewage and fishing pressure (by facilitating the storage and export of fishing products) was mainly responsible for the mortality of corals and loss of fish biomass. Additionally, the area of cultivated land (a likely surrogate for agrochemical discharges to coral reefs) was the main driver of increases in macroalgae. Coral mortality was further accelerated by warmer temperatures. The human expansion in coastal areas inevitably poses severe risks to the maintenance of complex ecosystems such as coral reefs, Mora said. On one hand, coral reefs are maintained due to intricate ecological interactions among groups of organisms. For instance, predators prey upon herbivorous, herbivores graze on macroalgae, and macroalgae and corals interact for their use of hard substrata. Given the intensity of these interactions the effects of a threat in anyone group may escalate to the entire ecosystem. On the other hand, the array of human stressors arising from changes in land use, exploitation of natural resources and increases in ocean temperature (and perhaps acidification) due to an increasing demand for energy, are significantly affecting all major groups of coral reef organisms. The simultaneous effect of human threats on coral reef organisms and the potential escalation of their effects to the entire ecosystem highlight the critical situation of coral reefs and the need to adopt an ecosystem-based approach for conservation and an integrated control of multiple human stressors, he added. The study also showed that the effective compliance of fishing regulations inside Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has been successful in protecting fish populations. But coral mortality and macroalgae abundance showed no response to the presence of MPAs. That was explained by the general failure of MPAs in the Caribbean to account for threats such as land runoffs and ocean warming. Unfortunately, the degradation of the coral reef matrix inside MPAs may, in the long term, defeat their positive effect on fish populations, Mora said. This further highlights the need for a holistic control of human stressors, he added. The future of coral reefs in the Caribbean and the services they provide to a growing human population depend on how soon countries in the region become seriously committed to regulating human threats, Mora said. Although coral reefs will experience benefits of controlling fishing, agricultural expansion, sewage or ocean warming, it is clear that underlying all these threats is the human population. The expected increase of the worlds human population from six billion today to nine billion for the year 2050 suggests that coral reefs are likely to witness a significant ecological crisis in the coming half century if effective conservation strategies, including policies on population planning, are not implemented soon, he added. This research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
The birds have been leaving in hurried flight, what for decades has been their natural habitat, 136 hectares of nesting ground at the Caroni Bird Sanctuary. The scarcity of the vibrant red-feathered birds is reflected in the dwindling number of visitors, which the birds once attracted to the Sanctuary on a daily basis. Blaming increased poaching over the past 10 years, game wardens posted at the Caroni swamp said the meat of the national bird was considered exotic. That along with the belief that it was also an aphrodisiac are said to be playing a big part in the demand for and possibly demise of the Scarlet Ibis: an Ibis dish is said to fetch up to $500 a plate in some places. No surprise then that many break the law in search of a quick buck from a ready market. Last week six men, armed with rifles and carrying an undisclosed number of the birds were held coming out of the swamp. Game wardens said it was just one of scores of "similar incidents" which occur every year. "Ten years ago, the Ibis spread it colourful wings for miles in a picturesque scene that made a visit to the Bird Sanctuary a must for all locals and foreign visitors," a tour guide said. He said nowadays the swamp was almost bare of the Ibis. "Visitors to the bird sanctuary are very disappointed," he said adding that those who had visited it previously were shocked to discover that the Ibis population had been so greatly reduced. Calling for greater penalties for poaching and more manpower as well as resources for game wardens, he said that if steps were not immediately taken to protect the Ibis, soon there would nothing left of the national bird. A bird weighing three to four pounds fetches up to $3,000 when served at restaurants at $500 a plate, he said pointing out that it formed part of a growing trade in wild meat at a number of restaurants. Over the years, game wardens have arrested and charged an increasing number of men caught hunting the birds at the swamp. Steve Mohammed, a game warden for the past 15 years, blamed the craze for wild meat for the drastic reduction of the Ibis population at the sanctuary. He said that unemployed youths hunted birds in the swamps and animals in the forests throughout the year to supply a growing market for wild meat. "We must change the culture and move from relishing hunted animals to savouring those that were reared for food," he said. Mohammed pointed out that a ban on hunting the national bird instituted more than 30 years ago had failed to produce an increase in the Ibis population. Mohammed said that poachers hunt in the swamp at night kill the birds and returned home with bags of meat which they sell for up to $100 a pound. He said that the Scarlet Ibis has been moving from the Caroni swamp to Carli Bay, Point Lisas, Mosquito Creek and Oropouche. But even in these places their numbers were said to be falling. It is suspected that they have also started to migrate to Venezuela in search of a safe home. Dismissing fears that the Ibis was under threat Senior Game Warden, Samsundar Ramdeen said, like a lot of Trinidadians, the national bird has been moving around. "They have found new homes in the Godineau River at Mosquito Creek, San Fernando, at Rousillac, Carli Bay, Point Lisas and Oropouche," he said. Ramdeen said that over the past 30 years, the number remained in the 12,000 range despite the increasing incidence of poaching. Ramdeen pointed to a housing settlement at Pond Road, Rousillac where the birds could be found nesting. He said that the absence of the birds at the Caroni swamp did not necessarily mean that they were under threat. "They move back and forth," he said. Conservationist professor Julien Kenny however believes the birds are on the way out. He said the Scarlet Ibis could be seen along the Beetham Highway, Port of Spain at one time. "But in a nation where everything is being shot at, we will have to depend on the migration of birds from other parts of the Caribbean," Kenny said. He noted that in Guyana, Barbados and other Caribbean countries there were major breeding colonies of over 100,000 birds and at the end of the breeding season they disperse. He said that some of them come to Trinidad. "Over the years the general attitude has been that it (the Ibis) is a thing to hunt," he said. Kenny called for the appointment of more game wardens at the Caroni swamp. "We need at least 50 wardens,well equipped to conduct a day-and-night patrol," he said. He felt too that the penalties for poaching were too trivial and needed to be significantly strengthened. President of the Wildfowl Trust at Pointe-a-Pierre Molly Gaskin also believes that the numbers are fast dwindling. She said that breeding was not taking place in the Ibis population. Noting that the Ibis had made a come back a few years ago but was once again facing problems, Gaskin said: "Our birds have been under stress for a very long time. The Ibis habitat has been shrinking daily with increased pollution and too much disturbance." "The Ibis needs to move along the coastline, however developmental works have driven them away," she said, blaming indiscriminate hunting for a reduction in the bird and wild life population. "Hunters are indifferent to how and when they hunt. They no longer spare pregnant females and continue illegal hunting during the season in which the animals breed," she said. She called for the breeding of wildlife species for sale. "It will take the pressure off wildlife," Gaskin said. At the Wildfowl Trust small numbers of Ibis are bred in captivity and released at up to 25 at a time, Gaskin said. It's an ambitious but small start but it is one Gaskin hopes would galvanise others into ventures aimed at saving the national bird.
The Canadian oil firm said the assessment was done by Gustavson Associates LLC of Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A for four prospects on the company's Corentyne Petroleum Prospecting Licence (PPL) located offshore Guyana. Gustavson was retained by CGX to prepare the report to estimate the potential undiscovered oil and gas resources underlying the 9,170 square kilometre offshore portion of the Corentyne in which CGX has a 100% working interest. Gustavson is a global consulting firm consisting of geologists, geophysicists, engineers, land and contracts managers as well as economists and financial experts who solve problems on all aspects of natural resource evaluations. "We're very happy to have this independent concurrence of our work by Gustavson Associates" stated Kerry Sully, President and Chief Executive Officer of CGX. "While waiting for the resolution of the maritime border between Guyana and Suriname, Warren Workman, our Vice President of Exploration, worked extensively with Geoseis Inc. to re-interpret the Guyana Suriname basin offshore Guyana. The most significant lead has been a series of structural traps in the Upper Cretaceous that we've called our Eagle Deep targets within our Corentyne PPL. These are basin opener plays and we look forward to further refinement of our interpretation with 3D seismic, and testing of our concepts by drilling as soon as possible thereafter," Sully said in a press release. CGX is a Canadian-based oil and gas exploration company focused on exploration for oil in Guyana, South America. CGX is managed by a team of experienced oil and gas and finance professionals from Canada, U.S.A. and the UK. CGX is financed internationally and has thousands of shareholders worldwide. CGX said no commercial discoveries have been made in the offshore Guyana basin and hence no reserves were found. The company said historic well data, regional geology and 2D seismic were reviewed by Gustavson to prepare a probabilistic resource estimate of that portion of the prospects lying entirely within the Corentyne PPL as shown below. Prospective Resources are those quantities of oil and gas estimated to be potentially recoverable from undiscovered accumulations. If discovered, they would be technically and economically viable to recover. However, there is no certainty that the Prospective Resources will be discovered. In addition, the following mutually exclusive Classification of Resources were used: Low Estimate - This is considered to be a conservative estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered from the accumulation. This term reflects a P90 confidence level where there is a 90% chance that a successful discovery will be more than this resource estimate. Best Estimate - This is considered to be the best estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered from the accumulation. This term is a measure of central tendency of the uncertainty distribution and in this case reflects a 50% confidence level where the successful discovery will have a 50% chance of being more than this resource estimate. High Estimate - This is considered to be an optimistic estimate of the quantity that will actually be recovered from the accumulation. This term reflects a P10 confidence level where there is a 10% chance that the successful discovery will be more than this resource estimate.
The additional funds are needed to assist those affected earlier this month by tropical storm Olga, which killed up to 33 people and displaced another 61,000, bringing new hardship and significantly disrupting recovery and relief efforts after tropical storm Noel struck the Caribbean country at the end of October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (<" http://ochaonline.un.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1080 ">OCHA) said in a statement today. Two weeks after Olga hit, nearly 14,000 people remain in 42 shelters while 47,700 others are staying with family and friends. Material damage is also significant, with over 12,000 houses affected, of which 370 were completely destroyed. Together, the two storms killed over 160 people and directly affected more than 130,000. At the same time, $6 million of the $14.4 million requested in November for relief and recovery after Noel have already been committed, leaving $8.4 million outstanding. Health care, water and sanitation, food security and shelters are the top priority needs. Although the impact of Olga was less severe than that of Noel, the recent storm further complicated ongoing relief and recovery efforts since many of the areas affected by Noel were also hit by the later storm. The UN and its partners are supporting the Government in its response to both disasters. The UN Children's Fund (<" http://www.unicef.org/ ">UNICEF) continues its distribution of food packages and hygiene items to affected communities, while the UN World Health Organisation (<" http://www.who.int/en/ ">WHO)/Pan American Health Organisation (<" http://www.paho.org/ ">PAHO) is providing supplementary staff, both local and international, and technical assistance in health and sanitation. The UN Population Fund (<" http://www.unfpa.org/ ">UNFPA) has provided hygiene and cleaning equipment as well as medical supplies, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (<" http://www.fao.org/ ">FAO) is carrying out emergency projects. In the aftermath of Noel, storm victims have also benefited from a $2.8 million grant allocated in November by the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (<" http://ochaonline.un.org/cerf/CERFHome/tabid/1705/Default.aspx ">CERF) in support of immediate life-saving activities. This year alone the Fund has committed $212.9 million to rapid response grants in 48 countries, including the Dominican Republic, and another $124 million in support of under-funded emergencies in 23 countries. |