In July, the Fisheries Department sent out a release alerting the country to a new disease affecting corals in this region. It's called Stoney Coral Tissue Loss Disease and it's killing corals in the Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve -which is the only area where it has been detected so far in Belize.

Well, the Fisheries Department along with its NGO partners have been busy trying to get a hold of this disease by researching and testing different treatment options. Cameraman Codie Norales and I tagged along with the coral reef monitoring task force on an expedition to Bacalar Chico Marine reserve to see first-hand the damage this disease is causing, and what the team is doing to try and prevent it from spreading. Here is that special feature on what can only be described as the most detrimental coral disease this region has seen:

About 28 miles from San Pedro on the Northern tip of Ambergris Caye is the Bacalar Chico Marine reserve. This snaking waterway is called the Bacalar Chico canal and it's a slow, calm boat ride between lush mangrove fringes. And, from this lazy backwater, it goes to wide open sea.

Now while the waters shimmer on the surface that is not the case down below. This is a dead brain coral; it is only one of many brain corals in five different areas of the Bacalar Chico Marine reserve that have what is called Stony Coral Tissue Loss disease or SCTLD for short.

It is also taking over pillar corals such as this one and star corals.

This deadly disease was first spotted in Florida in 2014 and since then it has affected nearly half of their stony coral species on the Florida Reef Tract. There are more questions than answers as to the origin and cause of this disease, but what is clear is that it is the most devastating disease affecting corals in this region right now.

It has already spread to countries in the Caribbean but it only became a major concern for Belize when it struck the adjoining reef system in Xcalak, Mexico.  And in late June, the alarm was sounded when it was detected in the Bacalar Chico Marine reserve. Fortunately, it has not been found in any other area in Belize - so far.

Andreina Acosta - Science Officer, Blue Ventures
"Blue Ventures does work in Bacalar Chico and Xcalak is the neighbouring Mexican village so this was very alarming for us so we started to keep an eye out on the corals. So we went out on a survey one day, I was leading that dive and that was about a month ago. I was leading the dive and I was noticing very alarming changes in the reef because I was not out here for about two months and since I am the one more accustomed to looking at the corals I noticed that something was wrong so I kept swimming and thought maybe it is just bleaching, the common stuff that we observe and then I saw like lots of corals dying and declining and I was like what is wrong? So I took some pictures and I sent it to my country manager, and she is the one who made all the contacts to other organizations and a few days afterwards it was confirmed it's like the disease right here."

It's here, all right and SCTLD is killing the corals by eating away at the tissue and leaving the bare skeleton behind. There is no hope for regeneration once the disease has completely taken over the colony.

There is a pronounced difference between healthy corals and infected ones. These are healthy corals, they have depth in colour, but they lose that when they have the disease.

Nicole Craig - Healthy Reefs for Health People
"When a colony is infected with stony coral tissue loss disease, the first thing you would look for is called a lesion which is a somewhat circular patch on a colony that you can clearly see the skeleton beneath it and also the tissue that is beginning to slough or slide off if you would wave your hands over it gently and use the water to make a current over it you would see the flesh kind of moving in the water and you would know it should be very much attached to it and very much a part of a live coral."

Now since the disease was identified in Belize, the Fisheries Department has had several meetings with all its NGO partners. They have been researching, collaborating with marine biologists and experts from Florida and the Caribbean to find out more about this disease. But there are no clear-cut answers.

Alicia Eck-Nunez - Marine Reserves Operations Manager, Fisheries Department
"The thing is it is not a definitive, what causes it that is what the research is showing we know it is a bacterial pathogen, research has shown a combination of things, it could be more than one bacteria, it could be another disease combined with a bacteria, we know it is water-borne, we know it is carried by the currents and we know it is carried by one site to the next by direct contact."

But given the aggressiveness and severity of this disease, authorities must take swift action. It took a collaborative effort to come up with a temporary experimental treatment that would have the least harmful effects on the marine environment.

Alicia Eck-Nunez
"We came up with three types of treatments, one would be the chlorine we are using, antibiotics and culling, we suggested and recommended to the fisheries administrator to do the shea butter and chlorine because that at the time seemed to be the best choice for us."

And that's this mixture. The chlorine powder is added to natural shea butter and then it is mixed until it has the right consistency. Then, a slab of clay is flattened into a tortilla shape and it is used as a base to coat the infected corals so the paste does not dissolve.

The treatment is then taken out to sea.

A team of marine biologists and conservation scientists is gearing up for a shallow dive in the Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve. They are going to collect footage and treat the hard-coral colonies that are affected by the stony coral tissue loss disease. About 30 percent of corals in this area have been infected by this disease. The team hopes to contain this disease by applying and monitoring a DIY (Do it yourself) past every two weeks.

As the team hit the water, they carried the chlorine and shea butter paste in a syringe, and the clay formation near the affected site.

The paste is then poured unto the flat clay surface.

The treatment is then quickly carried under the water and placed over the lesions on the tagged corals. Now, since this treatment was first applied in July there haven't been any improvements, but according to Fisheries Marine Reserves Operations Manager Alicia Eck- Nunez, it is too early to write it off as ineffective.

Alicia Eck-Nunez
"We are still running the testing so we would have to wait a little bit longer to do a second assessment on all the areas to see if we were successful or what percentage of the corals had success."

So the research and testing continues to identify the cause and best long term treatment for this lethal disease. The hope is that this disease does not spread to the entire reserve or worse, to other parts of the country that's an outcome too tragic to contemplate with life altering effects on the reef, the livelihoods of those living in coastal communities, fishers and the tourism industry. But it is a frightening and very real possibility, and that the team needs to urgently prepare for.

The National Coral Reef Monitoring Network will meet on September 11th to discuss national surveys and scaling up treatment methods.