The Mesoamerican Reef Ecosystem

I was just a kid in high school when a friend of mine wrecked his skiff on the rocks at Newtown Barracks, a coastal area in the northern sector of Belize City. Unwilling to repair it himself, he gave me what remained of his sixteen foot run-about. I acquired the transom, keel, and a few ribs, and set about rebuilding what was to become my favorite toy. I christened it "Scampi" for the freedom it promoted. Impressed with my effort, my father bought me a thirty horse powered, "Johnson" outboard motor. Which, owing to its light weight construction, powered "Scampi" at impressive speeds, and earned me the envy of every teenager in the neighborhood. Having that boat afforded me the opportunity to gain access to Belize's amazing waterways, reefs, cayes, and unsurpassed fishing. The cayes are small islets variously known as cays or keys, built up over the ages by accumulating coral debris. Alongside some other, not so small islands, such as Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker and Caye Chapel. Ambergris Caye in fact, approximates in length, the size of the independent island nation of Barbados. The significant difference being that Barbados is fourteen miles wide, while Ambergris Caye is only a little over a mile at its widest. The cayes are favored as recreational and fishing havens by native populations and tourists alike. Ambergris Caye of course, was not constructed merely from accumulating coral debris. Twenty-five miles long, it is home to a substantial village or township, San Pedro. With a permanent resident population of fourteen thousand, many hotels and guest houses accommodate the largest concentration of tourists and visitors in the country. At San Pedro the reef lies just a few hundred yards from the beaches, and the town was once home to the Caribena Fishing Cooperative. But tourism has now overtaken fishing as the islands main industry. Jet skis and dive boats have replaced the fishing vessels. And the independent fishermen have become tour guides, catering to the whims of pampered tourists, who languor in the shade in opulent self-indulgence.

The Barrier Reef in Belize runs just a few hundred yards off the beaches at San Pedro, and actually contacts the island a few miles north at Rocky Point. Belize's barrier reef is a contiguous part of the larger Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System which runs from Cancun on the north-eastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, through the Riviera Maya, and down to Honduras. Making it the world's largest coral reef system. Overtaking Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which is now ranked second due to extensive degradation and coral bleaching. Belize's barrier reef is accompanied by three large atoll reefs, Glover's Reef, Turneffe Island Atoll, and the Lighthouse Reef atoll. Which is the furthest east, fifty miles east of Belize City, and most picturesque. Northern Two Cayes lie at its northern most apex, Half Moon Caye at its eastern-most boundary is a nesting site for rare red-footed Booby birds, and Water Caye in the south. Centrally located is the world's most famous dive site. The Great Blue Hole is four hundred and ten feet deep and has been explored by such luminaries as Jacques Cousteau in nineteen seventy, and Richard Branson more recently. Of particular interest is the Belize Atoll Gecko, a rarely seen, nocturnal island dweller found nowhere else in the world but on the barrier islands of Belize.

The Turneffe Island Atoll lies between Belize City on the mainland, and Lighthouse Reef, and is the largest and most biologically diverse atoll formation in Belize and the Mesoamerican Reef System. Twenty-five miles east of Belize City, thirty miles long and ten miles wide, it encompasses approximately three hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of salt water flats, creeks and lagoons dotted with approximately one hundred and fifty mangrove islands and higher cayes with savanna and littoral forests. Expansive, intact mangrove and seagrass habitat and shallows provide important nurseries for a wide variety of fish species, crocodiles, lobster, conch and at least three important fish spawning sites. Coral reefs support two major industries in Belize, namely fisheries and tourism. And the reefs provide important shoreline protection from tropical storms and hurricanes. The Turneffe Island Atoll was declared a marine reserve by the government of Belize in twenty-twelve. It has been a productive fishery area for centuries beginning with the late Classic Maya when Mayan fishing camps were located on the leeward side of the atoll. Modern commercial fisheries began in the nineteen thirties, with the establishment of remote fishing camps on many of the islands in the atoll. Turneffe's tourism industry began in the fifties with development of Turneffe Island Lodge, one of the world's first remote fishing lodges devoted to tourism. Today there are three resorts located on the atoll specializing in eco-tourism, scuba diving, snorkeling and salt flat fishing.

Across the world's oceans there can be found only four atolls outside the South Pacific, and of the four, Belize is home to three. The fourth being the Banco Chinchorro Reef in south-eastern Mexico, just north of the Belizean border in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Glover's Reef is the most southerly of Belize's three atolls. Approximately twenty-two miles offshore mainland Belize, Glover's Reef is part of a protected marine reserve known as "Gladden Spit and Silk Caye Marine Reserve". One of the most beautiful and eco-diverse regions in Belize. Clear water, white sandy beaches, and an abundance of fish and marine wild life species makes Glover's Reef one of the most popular snorkeling and scuba diving locations in the great Belizean reef system. An oval ring of coral measuring fifty-four miles in circumference, within which lies more than seven hundred "patch" reefs. Isolated stands of coral including fan and brain corals. These corals are what make Glover's Reef so bio-diverse and interesting. Huge schools of parrot-fish, stingrays, sharks and sea turtles shelter in the reef, lay eggs and hide from predators. And every year, during the full moon between Match and June, groups of Whale sharks, the largest non-mammalian animals in the world, the most enormous fish in the sea, visit the warm tropical waters off Glover's Reef to feed on plankton. Despite their great size, these Whale Sharks have no teeth, and strain their microscopic meals through a complex system of filters.

Further south than Glover's Reef, at the southern extreme of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the Sapodilla Cayes, including Hunting Caye and Lime Caye, form the Sapodilla Cayes Marine Reserve administered by the Fisheries Department of the Government of Belize. But the government of Guatemala claims that the Belize-Guatemala maritime boundary lies northwest of the cayes, and Honduras also laid a claim to the Sapodilla Cayes in their nineteen eighty-two constitution. Though "The Maritime Political Boundaries of the World" place the cayes squarely within Belize territorial waters, Guatemalan political intimidation often sends militarized excursions to visit the cayes, infringing on Belizean territorial integrity. But might does not make right, and internationally prescribed boundaries recognizes Belize's sovereignty over the low-lying, sandy islets in the Toledo District of Belize. Despite protective measures, these and other locations along Belize's amazing reef system remain under threat from oceanic pollution, uncontrolled tourism, fishing and commercial shipping. Other threats include hurricanes and global warming, and the resulting increase in ocean temperatures, which cause coral bleaching. It is estimated by scientists that over forty percent of Belize's coral reefs have been damaged since nineteen ninety-eight. The Belize Barrier Reef has been affected by mass bleaching events including the first mass bleaching in nineteen ninety-five, with an estimated ten percent mortality of coral colonies. A second mass bleaching occurred when Hurricane Mitch approached in nineteen ninety-eight, and a forty-eight percent reduction in live coral cover was observed across the entire amazing Belize reef system. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System has been a graveyard for commercial shipping ever since Europeans ventured into the region.

The first known European to make Belize his home was the Spanish soldier Gonzalo Guerrero. Shipwrecked on Banco Chinchorro Atoll, off the Yucatan peninsula, he joined the indigenous Maya and is known as the father of the Mestizos. The Belize Reef System, the Yucatan coastal region and the Bay of Honduras were known, popular hiding places for British and Scottish privateers, who raided and captured treasure ships bound for Spain from the New World. Many undocumented shipwrecks laden with treasure lie undiscovered off these treacherous barrier and atoll reefs. Mesoamerican history is rife with tales of buried treasure left behind by the many pirates who made Belize and the Yucatan coastal area their lair from the sixteenth century onwards. While Morgan and Lafitte are said to have walked these shores, the most famous pirate resident was Fermin Mundaca. In his empty tomb on Isla Mujeres, etched on his headstone are the pirate symbols skull and crossbones, and his epitaph "as you are, I was. As I am, you will be." The noted historian Sir Robert Marx compiled a list of known shipwrecks off the coast of Belize and Yucatan. Following is a partial list of some of the more spectacular entries. The merchantman, the "Monmouth" with Captain Wydham on his way to London, wrecked on Glover's Reef in seventeen fifty-one. In seventeen sixty-four the English merchantman "Mary Oxford" coming from Jamaica was lost off Turneffe Island. In seventeen eighty the English ship "Live Oak" sailing for Jamaica, wrecked on the coast at Sittee River. In seventeen eighty-seven during a hurricane thirty-plus merchantmen were on the coast and off-lying areas, fifteen were lost in the port of Belize. The only one identified by name was the "HMS Triumvirate", lost at St. George's Caye carrying a large shipment of silver specie. A large ballast pile still lying in shallow water off that caye may be from that ship. In seventeen ninety-three the English gunship "HMS Advice" with four heavy cannon, captained by Edward Tyrell was lost to leeward of Caye Bokel on the southern tip of Turneffe Atoll, her crew was saved. These are but a few of the many dozens of shipwrecks that litter the coast, reefs and islands off Belize's mainland and the Yucatan peninsula. In the forty-five years between seventeen fifty and seventeen ninety-five there were twenty-nine shipwrecks recorded on the reefs of Belize.

Belize' barrier reef provides food and shelter for a great variety of fish species that often spawn in the brackish estuaries of freshwater rivers on the mainland. Designated a "World Heritage Site", over five hundred species of fish inhabit one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. A barrier reef is like an "oasis in a desert" because reefs form in areas where the water is very poor in nutrients. These surprisingly clear waters sustain few species. But in the middle of these poor habitats grows an impressive array of hard and soft corals, sponges, mollusks, crustaceans, fish and mammals. There are four main types of coral reefs in Belize, namely platform, fringing, atoll and barrier reefs. Platform reefs are oval shaped and thrive between barrier reefs and the mainland. Fringing reefs are found near the mainland as at Rocky Point on Ambergris Caye, and English Caye and Goff's Caye further south. At certain points along the reef there are locations where fish gather for mating. These locations are called spawning aggregations, and in certain months thousands of snappers, groupers and other species congregate for mating rituals. At these times and locations the fish are very easy to catch, and this could lead to declining fish populations. So there are eleven designated spawning aggregations protected by law in Belize since two thousand and three; these are: Rocky Point; Dog Flea Caye; Caye Bokel; Sandbore; South Point Lighthouse; Emily/Caye Glory; Northern Glover's Reef; Gladden Spit; and Rise and Fall Bank. The amazing Mesoamerican Coral Reef Ecosystem, now comprehensively protected in Belize, should continue to thrive and attract visitors indefinitely. Unlike many other countries where coral reefs are plentiful, Belize has taken the time to study their environment intimately. To preserve and protect this valued biosphere for future generations.

Howard A, Frankson -- Belize