MONTEGO BAY, St James — The Montego Bay Marine Park Trust has warned against an impending crisis in the city if residents do not remedy their poor environmental practices.

“If the poor environmental practices that are being carried out in Montego Bay are not addressed, then we will be looking at a crisis situation that could see us losing one of our most valuable resource, (the marine environment),” said Clayton Powell, the enforcement officer at the Marine Park Trust.

Among the range of poor environmental practices he identified are:

* over-fishing;

* the illegal and improper disposal of solid waste ; and

* the destruction of mangroves to facilitate developments.

According to Powell, the Marine Park Trust was now working to help curtail some of these problems but he said it was a task that required the cooperation of everyone.

“The Marine Park (Trust) cannot be expected to carry out this mandate on its own, without public participation and government input,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said, the remedial measures being explored by the Trust include the re-zoning of the park to stem the depletion of indigenous species and sourcing alternative employment for fishermen.

“What we are looking at is putting a proposal on the table for stakeholders or interest groups to actually help with some funding to find alternative and sustainable livelihoods for these fishermen outside of fishing so that some of these species can actually get a chance to rebound,” Powell told JIS News.

“It is not just the adult fish that are disappearing but… smaller and smaller fish. We even have species that are not endangered but are close to reaching that stage,” he added.

The Parrot fish is one such specie, whose decline could have devastating effects on the marine park.

“A lot of fishermen remove them from the water not knowing the important role they play in maintaining a healthy reef structure. What the fish normally do is graze on the corals, eating away at the algae that would normally smother the corals,” Powell said, adding that the Parrot also contributed to the white sand beaches for which the island is renowned.

But the problems extend beyond the depleting fish stock. The high levels of pollution caused by indiscriminate dumping and unauthorised developments, Powell said, have resulted in the denuding of the coastline due to the cutting down of trees and shrubbery.

“The wetlands are actually being destroyed and are used for developmental purposes. One of the affected areas is the Bogue Lagoon area, which is the only fish sanctuary that exists in the marine park,” he said. “These breeding grounds have a lot of small organisms that fish feed on and the mangrove area provides food so it is a very rich habitat. (But) what happens is that a lot of these areas are now developed and where we once had mangrove, we now have residential areas,” he added.

In addition to being a sanctuary for fish, the mangrove also acts as a filter for run-offs from land so sediments and top soil washed from the hillsides are trapped there rather than going into the ocean. Their removal to facilitate developments therefore affords free passage for pollutants to enter coastal waters.

It is against this background that he appealed to residents to take greater care of the environment.

“We are aware of the fact that with development comes some level of pollution, but the pollution can be contained within a certain level that all parties can live with,” he said.