NEPA monitoring Marine Parks

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) has been carrying out several monitoring exercises at the Montego Bay, Negril, and Ocho Rios Marine Parks, under the Climate Change Adaptation for Disaster and Risk Reduction Project.

These parks comprise ecological structures such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, sandy shores, rocky shores, and mangrove forests.

Project Coordinator at NEPA, Nichelle Oxford says the agency has been mandated to implement innovative ways of becoming more resilient to climate change, in light of the frequent occurrences of natural hazards.

She pointed out that climate change cannot be prevented but explained that there are ways of becoming more resilient to it.

To this end they’ve installed four data loggers in the Marine Park protected areas.

Data loggers are devices that records temperature at different intervals, which are carefully monitored by NEPA. It also helps to detect incidences that are likely to happen.

Other components of the project involves the re-establishing of sand dunes, replanting of mangroves in degraded coastal areas, such as, the Palisadoes protected area, Portland Bight in Clarendon, and Great Morass and Refuge Cay in St. Thomas.