The U.S. Department of Interior announced last month a $2,536,429 financial investment through President Biden’s Investing in America’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for insular territories to help improve island and coastal resilience.
“Bipartisan Infrastructure Law projects awarded will enhance biosecurity and strengthen efforts to mitigate the impacts of invasive species and bolster ecosystem resilience by restoring natural processes and using nature-based solutions to protect coastal, coral and island ecosystems in our Pacific and Caribbean territories,” Carmen G. Cantor, assistant secretary for Insular and International Affairs, said in a news release.
Three organizations working on St. Croix were awarded $1,436,138, with the remaining funds going to American Samoa, Saipan, Tinian, Roga, and Guam in the Pacific.
The Coral Restoration Foundation, Inc. will receive $999,431 to continue work that began last year on a coral nursery on Long Reef, north of Christiansted.
The process involves collecting pieces of broken corals damaged by storms or vessels. The pieces are broken into smaller nubs to stimulate faster growth in the nearby nursery, where they remain for nine months or a year.
Then, the coral pieces are affixed to dead parts of the coral colony at Long Reef. Hopefully, the reef will become healthier and the coral will spawn, said Bailey Thomasson, U.S. Virgin Islands Reef Restoration coordinator for the Coral Restoration Foundation.
The program has used volunteer community contract divers to retrieve coral pieces, bring them to the nursery lab and then reattach the pieces of coral to the Long Reef.
Thomasson said the Interior Department funding will cover September 2024 to September 2028. During the first two years, they will expand the nursery and create a new one on Long Reef. During the last two years, funding will cover “out-planting” 8,500 corals at Long Reef. Corals included in the “out-planting” include acropora palmata (Elkhorn) and six other species.
Thomasson is the only full-time staff currently, but others will be added in the future. Coral Restoration is looking for volunteer divers who want to work on the project. Those who are interested should contact Thomasson at Bailey@coralrestoration.org.
“Throughout that whole process we’re going to be digging in and trying to involve as many community members as we can, going out on dives with us and through outreach and education,” she said.
Coral Restoration Foundation, Inc. is well known for its successful large nurseries off the coast of Florida.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) on St. Croix will receive $406,707 from the DOI Insular Affairs Grant to support its ongoing coral restoration projects in the East End Marine Park and Buck Island National Monument, where TNC has already planted over 30,000 corals since 2021. The grant will also fund the continued monitoring of five reefs around St. Croix to determine the long-term impacts of coral disease and bleaching events and identify areas that are less affected than others, according to Matt Davies, Coral Field Project Supervisor at TNC.
Scientists will look at a wide range of species that are more affected by disease and global warming and they will collect pieces from which to extract genes to use in their nursery at TNC.
Using underwater scooters, the scientists will survey large areas of reef, searching for corals that are thriving despite the challenges they face. They will bring a small piece of these corals to their coral nurseries, where it will be cut into many smaller corals that will grow at a much faster rate before being planted at their restoration sites, Davies said. Some of each coral collected will be added to TNC’s coral gene bank for long-term holding, which will help to safeguard these species against further reef decline.
The grant will also fund two one-year fellowships to train young Virgin Islanders in coral restoration.
“It is important that we provide opportunities for Virgin Islanders to develop these skills and support the next generation of coral reef stewards,” he said.
The Caribbean Oceanic Restoration and Education Foundation (CORE) will receive $30,000 for coral nursery operations and community engagement. In 2023, CORE created its first underwater coral nursery in St. John’s Leinster Bay. They also just sponsored the 2024 St. Thomas-St. John Lionfish Derby, whose participants removed 222 fish/134 pounds of the invasive species from the waters around the islands.
Additionally, invasive species experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife will receive $48,866 for biosecurity training in the territories.
