Reef Health across the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System is slipping, that's according to the latest preliminary report by the Healthy Reefs Initiative.
Currently, early indications for 2022's upcoming reef report card are reaching the same "Poor" rating that was delivered back in 2006-the first year the Reef Health Report Card was issued.
A release from The Healthy Reefs Initiative this morning reported that quote: "44% of the 324 sites tested across Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras were all ranked as "Poor"" and went on to say that quote: " The number of sites ranked as "Critical" has also doubled since the last report, reaching 31 per cent of sites measured."
Still, the report's worse results are concerned with indicators of commercial fish biomass results were bad across the board, requiring a 142% increase in order to return to an acceptable level. That means that the stocks of fish regularly are seriously depleted.
And in Belize, the simple fact is that the reef has officially been overfished. Cherisse Halsall took a deeper dive into this first preliminary reef report. Here's that story.
Healthy Reefs for Healthy people released something of a reef mid-term today, it's the pre-cursor to September's projected Reef report card but right now, the results aren't good a 2.3 out of 5.
The subject areas of key indicators are Commercial Fish Biomass, Herbivorous Fish Biomass, Fleshy Macroalgae Cover, and living Coral cover and right about now, three of those are rated "poor".
And what's worrying Belizean scientists more than anything right now is the decline in fish biomass.
We spoke to the director of Healthy reefs for health people Melanie Mcfield who told us that the reef has officially been overfished.
Dr. Melanie McField, Director, Healthy Reefs for Healthy people
"The reef is slowly and gradually being overfished it has been, it's happened and you know we've been saying that but it wasn't critical. We've been saying that since the beginning so 15 years we've been saying we really need to.. the protected areas getting a real core of absolute no-fishing zones is critical but there are other things like the gillnet ban and looking at no spearfishing."
"It's not anything that's dramatic like blast fishing or doing cyanide. We're not doing anything bad it's just good old fishing but when you do it in 98% of the reef we're not protecting and letting the fish be undisturbed and grow large and re-produce. If we had that 20% where you know you could do that, you could see how that would replenish, the other 80% we would actually have fish everywhere. That's the goal, but the longer we wait and this, like if we had done this 15 years ago when there were more fish or at least 10 years ago now we would be reaping the benefit of that now it's going to take longer to have the replenishment actually kick in because there are just fewer fish out there."
But Mcfield says there could be an alternative explanation for the lack of fish on the reef climate change could have caused them to migrate.
Dr. Melanie McField, Director, Healthy Reefs for Healthy people
"And then fish movements, we really don't know there have been studies trying to follow that and track that and that you know could be a part of these problems it's just. It's just one of those studies that can be done as we share our data which we do in the Caribbean level and then on the global level - all of the modelling people and the people that are looking at climate change, they are using this. Our data will be used in a lot of these larger global modelling efforts that will help try to get at some of those questions and look at changes in ocean current patterns, temperatures that could be a piece of this equation."
And with Belize last in the class on fish, our fishers are going to have to duke it out with the environmentalists over what areas they'll be completely banned from fishing.
Dr. Melanie McField, Director, Healthy Reefs for Healthy people
"Our data can't really tell you why that's just the nature of, you know, the kind of ecological data that we collect. We know what happened and we can talk to others that, you know, the guys on the reef every day, they see what is going on. Things we've heard we're talking about you know a lot of just fishing and recreational fishing and it just takes a toll over time. We need, we've been saying for a long time that fish aren't reaching maturity. They aren't getting big enough to reproduce. These are the large snappers and the large body groupers for the most part that's only like a quarter of them that we counted that were large enough to reproduce so when that happens they are so far and few in between that it's just how are we going to maintain this population. And that's what the 20% full protection would do, because with absolutely no fishing. the fish get big old and highly reproductive."
The one positive outcome of the preliminary report was live coral. That indicator had the best rating overall requiring only a 5% increase to achieve a rating of "Good"
The complete Reef report Card is set to be released in September of 2022.
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