Diving in a Coral Forest - click here to watch the video on YouTube!Since early 2019, the CATS Programme collaborates with CLEAR Caribbean on a coral restauration project in Soufriere, Saint Lucia. The project aims at propagating Staghorn Coral and Elkhorn Coral along the coastline in the Soufriere area, reaching from Anse Chastanet Bay to the Pitons.The corals are grown on trees made of PVC pipes and glass fibre bars and are anchored to the ground with ropes. So far, a total of ten trees have b...

The Sandy Island Oyster Bed Marine Protected Area (SIOBMPA) Office coordinated a youth summer camp held during the week of August 19th to 23rd 2019. This camp was focussed on raising the awareness of the Carriacou’s youth of the valuable ecosystems on their island and their waste management responsibility while also improving their snorkelling and swimming skills and stimulating writing and creativity.The SIOBMPA is a still generally pristine and very unique ecosystem on the island of Carr...

The establishment of marine protected and marine managed areas, as a strategy for marine ecosystem management, has resulted in the loss of and minimised use of traditional fishing grounds.  An immediate unfortunate consequence of this was reduced income by fishers, and the trickle-down effects of the compromised sustenance of their families and the wider communities.  The introduction of FAD technology to the region in the early 1990s was an attempt to attain equilibrium between enviro...

The Soufriere Scotts Head Village Council has been one of CATS key partners within the Soufriere Scotts Head Marine Reserve (SSMR) Watershed in Dominica. Together, we have worked collaboratively on the Alums Stream Project, beach clean activities, community sensitization programs and well as support to fishermen and other interventions aimed at improving livelihood support and adaptation to climate change. This partnership continues to blossom and bear fruit. During CATS' most recent engagem...

The use of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), more commonly known as Drone technology, is now becoming more accepted as a tool to enhance monitoring and management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. The Caribbean Aqua-Terrestrial Solutions (CATS) Programme recognises that this technology is vital to the management of marine protected areas of watersheds, and has therefore embarked on a regional capacity building technical support initiative in its partner island territories of Saint Lucia, Grenada...

The CATS programme, together with multiple partners in Saint Lucia and Grenada, has engaged on utilisation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - commonly referred to as Drones - for environmental monitoring and management. The CATS programme's regional implementing partner CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency) is already actively making use of a UAS system to support and guide interventions related to the CATS programme. The activities are planned to be further extended in the future, allowing CARPHA-...

On October 16th, 2018, the CATS programme took part in the Saint Lucian TV talk show "What's happening now - with Laura". Our CATS colleague Dr. Camille David, expert for coastal and marine systems, discussed with several stakeholders from the Soufriere Watershed in Saint Lucia, how sustainable management and development of a watershed can be achieved. Alongside Dr. David, important partners to the CATS programme were on the show, such as the GEF UNDP Small Grants Programme , IWEco, Fruitage Jeu...

From November 16 to 20, 2015, the CATS-Programme organized an Environmental Awareness and Communications Training in Saint Vincent. 20 participants from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Transformation, Industry, Forestry & Fisheries, and other institutions participated at the one week training sessions. The team of trainers – Candice Ramessar and Carolyn Walcott – facilitated the sessions on environmental education and communication practices. The training was c...

Underwater Transect Analysis Training CATS2 February - April 2014The aim of this succession of five CATS2-supported National REEF Check Training and Certification Courses was to build capacity in underwater monitoring of coral reefs in five (5) Marine Managed Areas (MMA) in Dominica (DOM), Grenada (GDA), Saint Kitts and Nevis (SKN), Saint Lucia (SLU), and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). CATS2 and its partner institutions in the countries realised and acknowledged that improved susta...

CATS2 7th-28th July 2014Supported by CATS2 the Grenada MPA Management Unit of the Fisheries Department, in cooperation with local schools at Moliniere Beausejour organised a two-week MPA Summer Camp for 40 school children. The kids experienced a wide range of classroom and field activities including getting their feet wet snorkelling in the Moliniere Beausejour MPA. The Summer Camp included all kinds of hands-on experiments and quizzes related to the marine and coastal environment, its ecosystem...