Coral and sea amemones.
WHY SHOULD we be interested in knowing about all this bio-diversity in our waters?
There are several good reasons, both scientific and even political, which require us to document information about the biodiversity in our ocean space. First, in any given community, be it coral reef, mangrove lagoon or other, the organisms living there are integrated with and dependent on each other in subtle ways and each organism contributes to the overall health and trophic status of the community. If we know what organisms are living in any community and what function each performs, we place ourselves in a position to predict what changes may occur if we destroy or overexploit any one component of the system. This, of course, is particularly relevant to the management of fish stocks. At every stage of their life, fish are dependent on other biological systems for food and shelter. The juvenile stages of reef fish seek shelter in a
variety of habitats such as among corals, in sea grass beds and among the hanging roots at the edge of a mangrove lagoon. If we can determine the food preferences of individual species of fish and what organisms they select as prey in these nursery environments, our knowledge of the fauna and flora will permit us to institute conservation measures to ensure that the food supply is not destroyed by man's activity.
CONSERVE AND PROTECT
There is a political and international imperative for documenting our biodiversity, whether it be marine or terrestrial. Jamaica is a signatory to the International Convention on Biodiversity. This, places a responsibility on the State to document, conserve and protect the genetic resources in all areas under national jurisdiction. In response to this responsibility, the Government of Jamaica has prepared and published a "National Strategy and Action Plan on Biodiversity in Jamaica". This document sets out the framework for legislation and for management of genetic resources. We cannot manage these resources properly unless we have a complete inventory of those resources.
It has been estimated that a complete database of Jamaica's marine biodiversity might need to accommodate at least one million entries. We have a long way to go, as less than 5,000 have been documented already. However, we cannot reasonably expect to document all these organisms, as many are micro-organisms, but even for larger multicellular organisms our knowledge is still very imperfect. We need to go further than this because we need also to gather information on the natural history and ecology of the organisms we find, so as to learn how they contribute to the overall ecology of the environment in which they live. We should recognise that even if we have not yet documented all the existing biota in our marine environment, we have a responsibility to protect it and ensure that no action is taken which might destroy organisms which could later be found to have economic potential or might be important in maintaining balanced eco-systems. Essentially, this is suggesting that conservation measures must commence before we know what we are conserving.
