AGRRA REPORT

A six hundred page report published in the Atoll Research Bulletin in July 2003 ranks Bonaire's reefs as amongst the very best in the Caribbean. Only four sites make it into the top category: Bonaire, Los Roques, Flower Gardens and the Dutch Windward islands.

AGRRA, which stands for Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment, is a rapid assessment protocol which was developed at the University of Miami by Dr Robert Ginsburg, and implemented under the leadership of Drs Phil and Tricia Kramer. Bonaire became involved with this initiative early on and hosted the very first international training workshop in February 1999. This is the only assessment protocol, which attempts to assess the "health" of our reefs. Its success lies partly in the fact that it gathers data on all of the various components of the reef (corals, algae, fish and macro invertebrates) and partly in its enormous region wide scope. The protocol has been used at sites literally all around the Caribbean from Central America, the Gulf of Mexico as far south as Brazil. And this is what has allowed scientists for the very first time to "rank" the relative health of our coral reefs.

Some of the key findings include the fact that large grouper and snapper are rare everywhere suggesting that they have been chronically overfished throughout the entire Caribbean. This is not good news for them or us and will hopefully spur on new efforts to set aside sanctuaries and reserves to protect them. Perhaps surprisingly coral reefs in remote locations seem to show as much evidence of reef degradation as reefs close to human habitation. On one level this reflects the impact of some of the pan-Caribbean events we have seen over the past decades such as massive bleaching events, the die off of the black spiney urchin and disease episodes, which have swept through the region. At another level it suggests that the Caribbean Sea really is one complex and highly inter related ecosystem - in other words "what goes around, comes around" in a very literal sense.

On a grim note, live coral cover seems to be reaching an all time low. The average live coral cover for the Caribbean stands at just 18% for shallow reefs and 26% for deeper reefs. And this is where Bonaire shines. We are one of only five sites to show consistently higher than average coral cover as well as lower recent coral mortality. Oh and guess what, we've got more than our fair share of parrotfish!

But it's not all good news. Bonaire Curacao and Los Roques are all showing a high incidence of "yellow blotch" a coral disease effecting stoney corals. Unfortunately the stoney corals most effected are our massive reef building star corals. If we were to loose them our reefs would be severely impoverished. And believe it or not, for the first time in decades fish densities on the deep reefs of Curacao were higher than here on Bonaire. It is high time for us to start setting up some fish sanctuaries I suspect.

But the secret I feel compelled to share with you all is that, if this assessment protocol were to be carried out at the same sites here on Bonaire today, we would be lucky to rank alongside places like Jamaica where many of their reefs are no more than a memory. In other words, there is absolutely no room for complacency when it comes to protecting our reefs and our economic future.