dredging in SVG

medio medio at iam.net.ma
Thu Feb 22 15:34:08 EST 2001


Dear Tom and coral listers,

I fully agree: never ever give up. Having worked in the Egyptian Sinai
resort of Sharml el Sheikh (Ras Mohammed Nat Park) for many years I
personally witnessed the creation of an artificial beach (for the former
Hilton chain) with disastrous consequences for the nearby reefs. The impacts
were so overwhelmingly and visually obvious that lessons  were indeed
learned and nothing similar has ever been attempted (successfully anyway) by
other developers. Baseline data does help; no scientific data was available
at the time but the change as I say was so evident that it was deemed
sufficient.

Cheers.

(Dr) David Medio


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom van't Hof (by way of Bruce at IslandResources)
<tomvanthof at hotmail.com>
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: jeudi, février 22, 2001 04:48 م
Subject: dredging in SVG


>Dear Kurt,
>
>It is very sad to hear that the battle has practically been lost. I
>have followed your reports on Union Island, although somewhat
>superficially, and I don't know why I did not realize earlier that
>there is one thing that still needs to be done anyhow. If the
>dredging and the construction of the pier are going ahead, the
>impacts need to be documented so that similar mistakes can be avoided
>in the future. That will also require establishing a pre-dredging
>baseline. So there is no time to be lost.
>
>Suddenly the whole story reminded me of Bonaire, where I worked in
>the early eighties. A Venezuelan company was blasting and dredging a
>system of canals in the limestone terrace to create waterfront
>homesites. The canals were then going to be connected to the open sea
>with anticipated disastrous results for the neighboring reefs. We
>were unable to stop the development (too much politics - you know all
>of that), but we did monitor what happened when the dredging for the
>connection began. And we had the baseline data. We established
>permanent photoquadrats and placed sediment traps at three
>downcurrent locations from the dredging site and a control upstream.
>The evidence was overwhelming and the reef was overwhelmed with silt
>(sedimentation went up 1,700 times and all the deep Agaricia died
>within weeks). A silt curtain was put in place after most of the
>damage had been done. Do we ever learn?
>
>The monitoring is simple and can be done by laypersons. The analysis
>requires some expertise. I cannot commit anyone's time here, but why
>don't you transmit a "CRY FOR HELP" to do the monitoring. The
>Anguilla National Trust did exactly that when Beal Aerospace tried to
>destroy Sombrero and we made a difference there, so why not try it
>again?
>
>Never ever give up,
>Tom
>
>***************************************************************************
**************
>Tom van't Hof
>Marine & Coastal Resource Management Consulting
>The Bottom, Saba
>Netherlands Antilles
>Tel. (599) 416-3348
>Fax (599) 416-3299
>e-mail <<mailto:tomvanthof at hotmail.com>tomvanthof at hotmail.com>
>
>"Specializing in marine protected areas since 1979."
>Resume, references and project history at
><<http://www.irf.org/hof.htm>http://www.irf.org/hof.htm>
>
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>

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