Marine researchers have put a top end value of US$2.2 billion on coral reefs in the Caribbean, but have indicated that commercial activity could erode hundreds of millions of that value each year if sufficient care is not taken to police the marine environment.

The reefs were valued in the recently launched Reefs at Risk in the Caribbean, under a formula that quantified in dollar terms, the protection and savings they provide for countries in the region.

The report said that shoreline protection offered by natural Caribbean reefs saves countries between US$700 million and US$2.2 billion dollars annually.

Coral reefs in the Caribbean span an estimated 26,000 kilometres, which the authors of the report say help to dissipates wave and storm energy when hurricanes approach Florida and the Caribbean.

According to one of the authors of the report, Jon Maidens, continuous degradation of the reefs can however lead to loss in revenues from dive tourism by as much as US$300 million dollars annually up to the year 2015.

The diving industry earned approximately US$2.1 billion in 2000.

Lead author for Reefs at Risk, Lauretta Burke, says 88 per cent of reefs in South East Asia are rated as threatened while for the Caribbean it is 64 per cent. Burke adds, however, that the threat from coral diseases is greater for the Caribbean.

Coral reef protection was a main issue at the 11th biannual intergovernmental meeting on the Action Plan for the Caribbean Environment Programme and the 8th Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean, held in Montego Bay.

The reef report was a collaborative effort of 20 organisations and was officially presented at the conference.

The project was implemented by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and is a component of the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN).

The report features an analysis of human threats to coral reefs and evaluates the possibilities of coral reef degradation that could lead to negative economic impact.

The WRI says that nearly two-thirds of coral reefs in the Caribbean are threatened by human activity and hurricanes. Pieces of coral were washed ashore at Little Bay in Westmoreland during Hurricane Ivan just over two weeks ago.

“Many reefs are subject to multiple threats such as over-fishing and runoff of pollution and sediments from the land,” said Burke.

Additional threats, she believes, are “coral bleaching from warming oceans and coral disease from new pathogens.”

Maidens says the battering from hurricanes is a natural occurrence but the threat increases when the gales become frequent.

“If coral reefs are lost, replacing such natural protection by artificial means would cost coastal communities millions of dollars,” said the report’s co-writer.

Coordinator of the conference Nelson Andrade Colmenares believes that determining the potential impact of land-based activities on the coastal and marine resources is critical for the economic sustainability of the region.

The report includes an innovative feature – the first regionally consistent detailed mapping of these threats, which should help environmental organisations to set priorities for conservation and natural resource management.

It is expected to be an asset to countries implementing the Cartagena Convention and its protocol.

The Reefs at Risk Threat Index was first introduced by WRI in 1998 to determine reef degradation throughout the world and was applied in the Caribbean for the first time for the Reefs at Risk in the Caribbean report.