Roatan Marine Park

During the first half of the year, 64 illegal fishing incidents were reported by RMP rangers. However, these illegal fishing activities saw a decline as the year progressed; with a total of 24 incidents of illegal fishing in the second half of the year. This decrease coincided with the opening of the tourism industry, most likely causing new economic opportunities for the local population. This combined with our consistent community outreach and education, makes a difference in the way the locals of Roatan treat the ocean that surrounds them. We are excited to have successfully set up and begun operating the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART). With this tool, RMP is able to collect information on a daily basis about the patrols carried out by our park rangers. The use of SMART to guide efforts for the conservation of natural resources is for official use throughout the National System of Protected Areas of Honduras (SINAPH), according to executive agreement No. 006-2021. Of the six protected natural areas in Honduras, we are proud to be one of the organizations that use SMART with the purpose of being more effective at reducing environmental vulnerability and strengthening environmental management.

Roatan Marine Park (RMP) considers networking to be key in promoting conservation within our community development program. Thus, we pursue collaboration with authorities, the private sector, and donors at the local and international level. Following this premise, diverse initiatives were developed in six different communities around our island: a Solid Waste Management Campaign (Santa Elena), the Satuye Cultural Center (Punta Gorda), and Entrepreneurship Workshops (Los Fuertes, Coxen Hole, Flowers Bay, CrawFish Rock). These initiatives were achieved in collaboration with municipalities, community boards, the Private Sector, and National authorities. In terms of training and capacity building, through the Protect Our Pride Scholarship Program, eight young people took SCUBA courses in Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver and, Divemaster. Furthermore, this year gave us the opportunity to train and certify 50 participants from all around the island as Tour Guides. This training is focused on the conservation of ecosystems found within the Bay Islands National Marine Park. In 2022, Roatan will have certified Tour Guides available to show people the island's beauty and ways to keep it healthy and thriving for future generations.

Our 2021 wrap-up encompasses several achievements that will generate long-term results in environmental education for Roatan and the Bay Islands. In 2021, we adopted a new education program with the goal of approaching our diverse audience in ways that inspire empathy for the island’s natural resources. We strive to connect them with what we protect on a daily basis, thus motivating them to take action to protect Roatan’s marine ecosystem. As we come to the end of this year, we reflect and express gratitude for all events that took place which made it possible for children and adults to explore and learn about the reef ecosystem, as well as the volunteers who actively joined in those community actions. However, our top three highlights that made 2021 remarkable, are events that will leave a lasting legacy in our coastal communities.

In 2018, RMP began an initiative at two local schools (CEB Jose Santos Guardiola in Punta Gorda and Escuela Miguel Paz Barahona in West End) for a regular environmental program called, “Green School, Blue Future.” The program aims to instill a culture of conservation for marine resources in coastal communities within the Bay Islands National Marine Park.

This is a long-term program designed to help education centers adopt ways to improve their environment, the community, and therefore have a positive effect on the reef ecosystem. Infrastructure is a main component to the four pillars of conservation. For us, this meant the adaptation of a learning space exclusively for environmental education and ocean knowledge. Our team in charge of the Education Program, worked alongside teachers from CEB José Santos Guardiola, to create the Cordelia Banks classroom. This educational setting has been named after an important site off the southwest coast of Roatan, identified by marine scientists as a “hope spot” in the Mesoamerican Reef. Thanks to donors and a subsidy from the Fund for the Management of Protected Areas and Wildlife (FAPVS), we will be able to promote ocean conservation in the community of Punta Gorda and schools from the Santos Guardiola Municipality.

Every year RMP holds a marine conservation contest with the schools, to remind the school community the importance of taking action to protect our ocean. After the first stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) sightings in 2020, and its subsequent rapid spread throughout Roatan’s coral colonies, the call to action has become even more necessary. One of the main challenges in Honduras is the promotion of greater conservational awareness. This year, RMP Marine Conservation Contest encouraged students and teachers to come up with ideas on how, as individuals, they can play an important role and become ocean guardians who understand the ecological role of key species for reef health. The contest also included ideas to reduce our impact of marine debris through a 4Rs program at school. The title for this contest was, “Connecting You with the Ocean,” and consisted of three categories: drawing, speech, and a waste management plan. Students throughout the Bay Islands participated with the assistance of their teachers. This year, nine participants earned awards and prizes, which included tablets and other devices donated by AT&V.

2020, the year the world was put on pause, gave us the opportunity to revamp our Education Program. Among our regular programs, the sea turtle camp had to undergo some of the biggest changes. The camp's methodology had to be adapted and shifted to online (virtual) camps, including the design, printing, and distribution of handouts for students, as well as the instructions for teachers and incentives for participants. The sea turtle camp program has become an important resource to strengthen teachers’ leadership skills, while developing their capacities on teaching science and conservation in the classroom and remotely.

Throughout this process, we were able to document and measure knowledge acquisition and perception from teachers and students towards sea turtle conservation. This experience has provided a documented baseline of sea turtle conservation education within the Bay Islands National Marine Park. The report generated based on this experience and the qualitative data collected has been published in the International Zoo Educators Association Journal 2021. The full article can be found on pages 66-70: http://izea.net/education/ize-journal-current-past/.

Our research program is our most recent endeavor. Over the last two years, we have brought together an amazing group of Honduran researchers to lead the way and ensure we are making science-based decisions towards the efficient management of marine resources. Unfortunately, our reefs are in peril due to a significant number of stressors such as climate change, sedimentation, overfishing, and most recently, infectious diseases. An unprecedented disease called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has been afflicting Caribbean reefs since 2014. This disease was first reported in Roatan in September of 2020, thanks to a citizen science report. Since its first report, RMP has worked tirelessly to prioritize treatment and monitoring actions to mitigate the effects of the disease.

Thanks to generous support from the Mesoamerican Reef Fund (MAR Fund), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and other partners, RMP has led one of the most extensive interventions in the Mesoamerican Reef. We have successfully tagged and treated 1,373 corals, applied more than 3,000 treatments on 24 different species, and did all of this at 48 dive sites around the Bay Islands, including Utila and Cayos Cochinos’ seamounts. Although treatment is not always guaranteed to halt the progression of the disease, we have observed between 50-65% efficacy. Our long-term monitoring has tracked the progression, prevalence, and stages of SCTLD at 21 sites islandwide. More than 40,000 observations were made, and 36 species were consistently monitored. Approximately 95% of the sites monitored are currently showing signs of the disease, highlighting the rapid progression that characterizes SCTLD. One of the major highlights of the response coordination has been engaging actively with a wide range of stakeholders to increase awareness of the disease and encourage more people to join the efforts. Dive shops were engaged through our “Adopt a Dive Site” initiative to treat and reassess priority colonies on the west and south sides of the island. RMP is proud that Honduras is one of the few countries in the Caribbean where dive centers have successfully joined SCTLD efforts and remain fully committed to mitigate the impact of the disease. All the experiences and lessons learned have enabled the RMP to lead the way for others to rapidly act in the fight against SCTLD. We have trained colleagues at organizations in Tela, Cayos Cochinos, Utila, Roatan, and Guanaja, in both monitoring and intervention of SCTLD.

The “Adopt a Dive Site” initiative was a result from the overwhelming engagement from dive shops in the response to SCTLD. This initiative aims to involve dive shops in SCTLD efforts by training them to treat and reassess coral colonies. Each dive shop adopts a local dive site and is responsible for the tagged coral colonies at each site. This has been a very successful initiative, 12 dive shops are involved and are responsible for more than 20 dive sites. They have helped our team treat and assess more than 250 corals. Thanks to their help, we have managed to save four pillar corals, two of which have been seen spawning after treatment intervention!

This year has been an excellent year for the RMP Coral Restoration Certification Course. We have certified two new instructors with the intention of training even more in the new year. With more instructors, the course is now offered in three different dive centers in West End: Roatan Divers, Coconut Tree Divers, and Sun Divers. More trained divers mean more participants for our coral restoration activities! It also acts as an advertisement for the Coral Restoration Program and allows tourists to learn more about the threats facing coral reefs globally and how our program helps to mitigate them, while gaining experience in coral restoration activities. People who take the course can choose between two levels, Adventurer or Ambassador. With the first level, Adventurer, divers are trained in nursery cleaning and maintenance. In level two, divers are certified as Ambassadors, and along with the nursery activities, they are trained in out-planting and outplant monitoring. We are proud to say that the majority of students successfully complete the full course and in the past year more than 40 students have become certified. We hope to double that number in the year to come and introduce even more people to the joys of coral restoration!

With such high interest in the Coral Restoration Program and Certification Course, we were able to enlist more than 25 volunteers for an international out-planting event held in December of this year, Coralmania. Alongside organizations from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras, we collectively out-planted 1,703 corals. Our personal goal was to outplant 300 fragments onto degraded patches of reef, but we ended up out-planting 360 exceeding our goal thanks to the hard work of our volunteers. It was such a huge success that we hope to continue this tradition every year!

This year, we have had the fortune to witness tiger grouper spawning in three separate months: February, March, and April. Each event involved aggregations of approximately 200 individuals. Little is known about tiger groupers and even less about their spawning behavior compared to other species of grouper. It is for this main reason RMP has the fish spawning aggregation (FSA) project; to fill in the knowledge gaps of an ecologically important species. Although we have not witnessed spawning of other grouper species at this specific site, we have reported it in other species around the same time. RMP has installed hydrophones in all three of our FSA sites. Hydrophones are underwater acoustic sensors that record sound at set intervals for a certain period of time. Every species of grouper has a unique noise they make during spawning. Thus, the audio footage recorded from the hydrophones can be used to identify each species of grouper using a special software. As a bonus, we can verify spawning events that are too deep or for when we are not in the water. We are very excited to see what other species might be spawning at our FSA monitoring sites!

The Caribbean lobsters are one of the most economically important resources for fisheries in the world and they also play important roles in the maintenance of healthy and diverse marine ecosystems. However, their populations are dwindling due to poaching and other illegal activities.

It is illegal to catch lobsters inside the Marine Protected Area, and RMP rangers, with the help of the Navy, enforce this through daily patrols. All illegal catches are measured and weighed, which allows us to build a database to understand the status of the lobsters’ population. Lobsters are part of the Responsible Seafood Guide for the MPA, but only during open season and ones of legal sizes. This provides stability to their population.

We had a busy year with more than 500 participants (snorkelers and divers) who received their license to hunt lionfish. More than 100 lionfish workshops took place in nine different locations around the island. With a huge decrease in divers on the reef during 2020, the number of lionfish increased drastically with reduced hunting pressure. With tourism back in full swing, our licensed hunters have been putting a dent in their numbers and hopefully we will be seeing them more in restaurants than on the reef.

In 2021, we installed 21 new dive sites around the island. A large portion of these sites were set up and named through our Name a Dive Site Program. This program allows people to commemorate loved ones in a unique, yet meaningful way, by purchasing and naming a site. All proceeds go directly to our core conservation efforts. To better illustrate this, in the West Bay area, Alexis Zebrowski named a dive site, "Marilyn's Mystery," after her mother, in West End, Kevin Schonken gave his daughter a gift and named one, “Dara’s Dream,” and in Sandy Bay, the community of Palmetto came together to remember Joan Hester with "Joan's Peace."

Throughout 2021, more than 150 mooring lines were replaced or installed, and more than 6,000 feet of rope was used. To prevent damage to the rope near the grounding, almost a third of the 330 dive and snorkel sites had plastic riser floats added to the line to keep the chain away from the coral. With hundreds of sites around the island, we ask that divers take a moment to check the lines and report when they need replacing. If a line is in bad condition, it is better to remove the buoy and line rather than lose everything.

This year we welcomed back the sailing community and had a relatively busy season all the way until June. In addition to the sailboats, we noticed several larger vessels using the moorings in the lagoon between West End and West Bay. This prompted us to install four heavy duty moorings using three sand screws and a concrete block; these are now available for a fee per day. By the end of 2022, all of the 25 mooring lines will have new nylon rope and have a minimum of two screws per mooring.

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