Basseterre, St. Kitts, May 7, 2021 (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Marine Resources): The public is being invited to take part in a 2 week training session courtesy of IWECO St. Kitts and Nevis in collaboration with the Ecosystem Management Division of the Department of Marine Resources.
The Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (IWEco Project) is a five-year, regional project that builds upon the work of previous initiatives, to address water, land and biodiversity resource management as well as climate change.
In an interview with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Media & Communication Unit, Marine Biologist at the Department of Marine Resources, Tricia King explained that the sessions are being referred to as “MoReef for Coral Restoration” training.
She spoke in detail about the MoReef training which she says is a design for artificial reefs and noted how adding more reefs in St. Kitts and Nevis enhances food security.
“We are going into the MoReef training and it’s actually a new design for an artificial reef. An artificial reef is a man-made reef, so it serves the same purpose as a naturally occurring reef where it provides homes for different types of marine life. It also supports the increase of fish stock around the area and so that way it eventually supports food security as we eat marine creatures. The Moreef design actually has modules and they can be stacked under water to create different shapes. These shapes helps to increase ecological optimum design and also it helps to facilitate more life surrounding the reef and the more reef tag line is actually (More reef More life) so you see where we really reached out to the experts in Saba in order to assist us with this initiative in order to help build reef Resilience”, she said.
The Marine Biologist then shared the main objective of the project.
“The aim is to really have reef resilience to hurricanes and strong storms. This helps us to also increase ecological improvements in the marine environment in order to really facilitate our basic conservation goals. I really expect person to be joining us next week and we are really excited to be learning from the experts from Saba. The design is really working. They actually did a recent installation in Kenya and so St. Kitts will be added to the list of countries that have more reefs in there waters so we are all excited”, King explained.
The Moreef training sessions will run for a period of 2 weeks on Mondays and Wednesdays. The training begins Monday May 10th and run from 6pm-8pm via Zoom.
Persons interested in joining the training can contact the Department of Marine Resources Facebook page to access the Zoom link.