Dr. Judith Mendes

Dr. Judith Mendes previewinf slides undera microscope
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CARIBBEAN CORAL REEFS ARE DYING

Coral reefs are the foundation of the Caribbean’s tourism and fishing industries, accounting for a sixth of the region’s jobs, and a third of its income (or US$15 billion) per year, and 500,000 tonnes of its food. Caribbean reefs, however, are suffering so terribly from the effects of overexploitation, pollution and climate change that it is predicted that all the region’s corals may be dead within 40 years.

Sustainably managing the region’s reef resources has proved difficult because most Caribbean nationals are unaware of the devastation taking place (with the reefs underwater being literally out of sight and out of mind). In addition, most of the region’s existing reef conservation efforts are either understaffed or highly dependent on costly imported staff.

ONE PERSON CANNOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM

When I was a little girl my father took me snorkeling over the reefs at Hellshire every Sunday. Back then I did not know how important reefs were, but only that they were beautiful, with awe-inspiring colour and life. These reefs at Hellshire inspired me to become a marine biologist. There are no reefs at Hellshire now, only weed covered rocks. Throughout the course of my life I have watched them die before my very eyes.

My individual actions as a scientist studying corals did not help to save them. Consequently, I designed a course and started to teach coral reef biology in the hope that some of my students would join the effort to conserve the Caribbean’s reefs. This, though, proved difficult as there was no textbook that focused on Caribbean corals or reefs, and because the numbers of students that I alone could reach was very small. Hoping to reach a larger audience, and so bring about a greater change, I wondered if I was the only university lecturer in the Caribbean battling for this cause. As it turned out, I was not. There were a few Caribbean lecturers trying to teach coral biology around the region, all of whom were facing the same problems I was. I felt that while we were individually incapable of overcoming problems like the lack of a region-specific text for our courses, we could overcome these obstacles if we worked as a team.

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THE CREATIVE PROJECT

The Caribbean Reef Education and Training Initiative (CREATIve) will solve many of the problems faced by coral reef lecturers living and working in the region. The US$ 715,000 project is funded by the ACP-EU Cooperation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK), a programme of the ACP Group of States with the financial assistance of the European Union.

CREATIve is a co-operative effort by three universities (The University of the West Indies, The University of Belize, and The College of the Bahamas) in five Caribbean countries (The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago). CREATIve’s Caribbean-wide approach is essential because the region’s reefs are intimately connected by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and problems (such as diseases of marine life) in one area usually spread rapidly to other locations via sea currents. Thus, without region-spanning management of reef-resources, successes by individual countries will not stem the decline of the region’s reef systems as a whole.

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CREATIve will build the skills of ten educators already working at regional universities by having the lecturers train themselves and then pass on their newly-acquired knowledge to their peers. The self- and peer-trained lecturers will then write the first university-level text that addresses coral biology and management from a Caribbean perspective, and develop the first region-wide, degree-level course on the subject. The CREATIve text and course will be made available to at least 75 Caribbean students by the final year of the project (and every year thereafter).

THE BENEFITS OF THE CREATIVE PROJECT

In this way, CREATIve will not only strengthen the capacity of Caribbean universities, but also increase the number of skilled Caribbean professionals with knowledge of coral biology and conservation methods. CREATIve will therefore provide the region with the skilled workforce it needs to achieve long-term conservation of its coral reef resources, to conduct vital new research, and to sustain economically-important, reef-dependant industries, like tourism and fishing. Indeed, if CREATIve’s graduates bring about a mere one percent increase in the Caribbean’s reef resources, the region would earn an additional US$ 150 million per year.