 In more environment news, on 28 October 2021, the Zinduja National Trust SL&T convened a virtual meeting with key stakeholders to present the findings from a marine assessment study conducted for the marine area around Pigeon Island. The purpose of the marine assessment was to evaluate the current status of the health marine ecosystems which surround Pigeon Island to identify the causes of any degradation found and to make recommendations for addressing any anthropogenic and climate change impacts affecting the marine ecosystem. The outputs from this study include a marine ecosystem assessment report, a rehabilitation and monitoring plan, a coral reef and seagrass bed ecosystem valuation report, marine ecosystem maps and an underwater photography atlas, the first of its kind for Pigeon Island. Jeanine Compton-Antoine is the Comfort Service Manager at the Zinduja National Trust. And it was indeed very eye-opening. It showed us that some of the coral is actually healthy and doing well. We found stands of a species called Acropora opalmata, which is Elkhorn coral, and this coral had been decimated by a bacterial disease in the 80s throughout the Caribbean. So it was indeed surprising and very heartening to know that this species is doing very well at Pigeon Island. And the consultants have actually recommended that we should undertake a restoration exercise which would include transplanting some of the healthy species of Acropora to other locations around Pigeon Island. In addition to that pencil coral and some other coral species were also found to be doing very well. But we've also found the scaly coral disease that has been impacting the hard corals throughout the Caribbean. This now is also impacting corals at Pigeon Island and has led to the degradation of the reef. We've also noticed that there in the past Pigeon Island was known to be a nursery area for queen conk and no queen conk, live queen conk were found at Pigeon Island and neither were a large number of white sea eggs found at Pigeon Island. As well the lobsters at Pigeon Island seem to be under severe pressure because the only ones that were found around Pigeon Island were juveniles. So it shows clearly that we have to do some further work and further assessments of the species found around Pigeon Island. Some of the pressures on the Pigeon Island marine ecosystems that were observed while the study was being conducted include the use of sun cream and related sunscreen agents by beach users which may impact the corals. Increased fishing pressure through recreational and small-scale fishing. Miss Compton Antoine says there are numerous other factors impacting the seagrass bed. These include invasive species like an invasive seagrass that has come in from the Mediterranean, the lionfish and also a brittle star species, a type of starfish. As well as water quality issues, there are high presence of nitrates and phosphates which are coming from runoff from mainland St. Lucia. And then one of the issues as well that the consultant stressed was the presence of litter and solid waste that was found in the area as well as anchor damage. So they said that consideration should be given to the installation of permanent moorings and I know that SLASPA and other agencies have been talking about the overall plan for Rodney Bay including the installation of moorings for yachting and other vessels. And then they also indicated that they noticed that vessels were traversing the area at very high speed which are a risk to fawners such as turtles but also to human life and they said that we should look carefully at reducing speed. So there's a number of things that have been highlighted in this report and the solution National Trust looks forward to working with the other agencies to see how we can implement, develop and implement a comprehensive management plan for the area. The estimated economic value of coral reefs and seagrass beds surveyed in the marine area is approximately EC $425,355. The study which comments in April 2021 and concluded in September 2021 was conducted by a team of consultants from Cree Ocean as part of the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund being implemented by the St. Lucia National Trust and Co-financed by the International Climate Initiative.