Barbados TravelAdvisor

From today's Advocate.


4/5/2010

By Allison Ramsay

The drought in Barbados could affect the coral reefs, which are one of the natural barriers to coastal hazards.

In a recent interview with the Barbados Advocate, deputy director of the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU), Dr. Lorna Inniss, explained that since the air temperature is higher due to a lack of rain fall, the sea surface temperature is also increasing.

“This means that you are going to get bleaching of your coral reefs, which means they are not going to be as resilient to diseases, stresses etc and this is one of our natural barriers to winter swells, tsunamis and everything else. So if our coral reefs die we would lose one of our natural barriers that would protect us against these coastal hazards,” said Dr. Inniss.

Another possible concern she noted is that there may be salt-water intrusion into coastal aquifers since, with the drought water being used up, the pressure will cause more sea water to come in and affect the amount of potable water available.

Speaking about the affect of the winter swells on Barbados, which usually affects the West Coast, she said this occurs every year and is part of a cycle. “The winter swells occur when wind storms up north are pretty intense, which create higher than normal waves that come down through the Atlantic and come towards us. Usually the beaches would get narrower during the winter and they get wider as we go into April-May. When the hurricane season comes, they narrow and in October-November they widen back,” Dr. Inniss.

“We have an early warning system in place for these winter swells, which cause a significant loss of sediment along the beaches and all of these have the potential to reduce our resilience towards the next coastal hazard.”

Dr. Inniss said that what is of concern and what will be monitored is the fact that winter swells are getting higher. “Looking at the data from our wave recorders that we have installed on the West Coast, we have recorded higher swells than we have ever seen during the winter, swells were up to 15 feet. We don’t know if this is a trend we will have to look at this over the next two to three years to determined that.”

According to her there may come a point a time when the beaches may not recover naturally that is when the CZMU would go in and do stabilisation work.

“But if it gets worse in the future my belief is that Government will have to consider some policy changes. For example the Chief Town Planner requires that on beaches that you have a 100 ft/30 m step back from the water mark for coastal development…my guess would be that we would have to retreat a little bit further.”

“ People have started doing that already in some countries such as Cuba where they set back hotels on the coast 300 feet inland. Tourism is our business and we cannot afford every time a winter storm up north occurs for us to lose our hotels, if it continues to get worse we may have to seriously consider retreating inland in the future,” she continued.

Hello Dr. Inniss! Have you been asleep for the last four years or something? This has been happening in the Mullins Bay area -what has your office done about it?



Dr. Inniss, Barbados certainly does not have the size of Cuba to keep retreating from the coasts until the whole island is under the Atlantic. How about coming up with more non-communist solutions like beach restoration and/or beach nourishment such as what the market economists just completed next door to Cuba in Mexico last month - http://shar.es/m2yPx