finish nutirent program

Finish of the nutrient monitoring project

On March 30, 2007, the sample collecting part of the nutrient monitoring project for Bonaire Curacao and St. Lucia was completed. This project is intended to establish baseline nutrient data for the three islands for comparison, and in preparation for the sewage treatment plant project to be constructed on Bonaire. The preliminary analysis will be presented in Bonaire on June 11 and 12. The final analysis will take a number of months.

On each island, ten sites were sampled, at a depth of 20 and 60 feet.

Dr. Brian Lapointe of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute together with Ramon de Leon, manager of the Bonaire National Marine Park, Frank van Slobbe of the Environmental Dept. of Bonaire, and Paul Hoetjes of MINA Curacao will present the results.

Reef Care wishes to thank the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) for support of this project. Matching funding was received from UNEP and the sponsors listed below.

The main local sponsors of this project are:

In Bonaire:
Stinapa Bonaire
Captain Don's Habitat
DROB Bonaire

In Curacao:
Zetraco N.V.
Habitat Resort Curacao
Easy Divers at Habitat Curacao
LVV Curacao (Agricultural and Fisheries Service)

This nutrient monitoring project is part of the activities of the Netherlands Antilles Coral Reef Monitoring Node, which includes volunteer reef monitoring groups on each of the islands of the Netherlands Antilles, which in turn is an activity of the Netherlands Antilles Coral Reef Initiative (NACRI)