The Saint-Martin Nature Reserve and the Sint Marteen Nature Foundation have each created separate coral nurseries since 2015 and 2016 respectively.
The objective is to cultivate fragments of corals to then repopulate the damaged reefs. On August 13, the Sint Maarten Nature Foundation, which had relaunched its nursery program in May, deplored on its Facebook page the partial destruction of two of its "trees", these vertical structures whose branches support the coral cuttings. A destruction whose cause remains unknown, and which damaged 40% of the coral fragments of the nursery. 20% did not survive. The Sint Maarten Nature Foundation announced on Sunday August 19 that it had transferred the coral fragments and their new tree to the dive site called The Bridge, near the entrance to the lagoon in Simpson Bay.
On the French side, in March this year the Nature Reserve carried out annual monitoring of reefs and seagrass beds on the Rocher Créole, Pinel and Tintamare sites and, outside the Reserve, on the Fish Pot site, in the Anguilla canal. . “The marine space appears less affected by Irma than the terrestrial space, with all the same very affected coral areas. However, if the physical impact seems to have been limited on reefs and seagrass beds, the significant displacements of sediments following Irma continue to harm them. As well as the discharge of untreated wastewater, ”she concludes.
The coral nurseries established by the Reserve on three different protected sites (Tintamare, Cayes Vertes, Pinel) have been damaged by Irma but are still there. They are not vertical like in the Dutch part but horizontal, like oyster tables. "We are more exposed to swell so if we had installed vertical structures they would have collided and broken" explains Julien Chalifour, in charge of the Missions and scientific monitoring center of the Nature Reserve.
(Photo credits: Saint-Martin Nature Reserve and Sint Maarten Nature Foundation) (More details on www.soualigapost.com)
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