Reef Check Dominican Republic

The tourism in this country depends on clean beaches, crystalline water and healthy coral reefs, which produce the white sand of our beaches, protect the coast of the erosion, they are a source of very important food and they are a great potential market of 20 million divers and bathers. Our country has not worked satisfactorily to reach the diving market to a great scale.  Mean while the coral reefs of our coasts have similar quality that the reefs of other zones of the region.  This competitive advantage has not been exploited for the Dominican Republic. 

The Foundation Reef Check joins strategic local associates to obtain a goal in common: enlarge the tourist quality, employing it as a sustainable financing for the conservation of coral reefs.  The educational program of Reef Check complements the European Beach Blue Flag Program for the Hotels that are located in beaches; this program was adopted by the Association Conservation of the Caribbean in the 2003. Reef Check program includes training and educational kits. The program includes 5 levels to train and give knowledge about coral reefs and to promote the participation in the activities of monitoring of Reef Check global. The profits produced by the sales of tourism are used to support the program of national monitoring and to coach local residents from the the community.

The Foundation Reef Check Dominican Republic works to highlight greatly the competitiveness of tourism in the Dominican Republic and to help to protect invaluable marine resources, creating benefits so that the local conservation becomes long-term economically sustainable. 

·        Offering a higher added value to the services and tourist products.

·        Offering products and unique services not available in other destinies. 

·        Adopting better international practice respecting the environment by the initiative of Blue Flag.

Reef Check develops a program of appropriate training for RD, provides workshops of training for coaches, and produces kits of training in various languages that will be sold in the hotels, diving centers, and cruisers lines.  The training and the kits will be sold by detail or in packages all included.  The incomes of the sale al wholesale will be used  to finance the program without end of gain Reef Check Dominican Republic while the incomes of thesale by detail will be for the hotels and centers of diving as an incentive.  Reef Check works jointly with the government to create damaged coral reefs rehabilitation projects and to help to implement management approved activities .  The Dominican Republic will be the first country to implement this type of program in the world and play an important role in the tourism of diving, and the education and conservation of marine resources in the Caribbean.

Reef Check develops a program of appropriate training for RD, provides workshops of training for coaches, and produces kits of training in various languages that will be sold in the hotels, diving centers, and cruisers lines.  The training and the kits will be sold by detail or in packages all included.  The incomes of the sale al wholesale will be used  to finance the program without end of gain Reef Check Dominican Republic while the incomes of the sale by detail will be for the hotels and centers of diving as an incentive.  Reef Check works jointly with the government to create damaged coral reefs rehabilitation projects and to help to implement management approved activities .  The Dominican Republic will be the first country to implement this type of program in the world and play an important role in the tourism of diving, and the education and conservation of marine resources in the Caribbean.

Educational product development on coral reefs

The alliance to highlight the tourism and to conserve the marine resources in RD will unite associates with experience in its respective fields to create new products and services that will be attractions for the majority of tourists that visit the island.  The products will be easy to read, short, exciting books that will inform the visitors how to behave under the water, indicating what can be done what should not, for example how  to enjoy the beauty of the coral reefs and to appreciate its value.  These books will encourage all tourist to acquire mask and snorkel and to participate in interactive activities, making them hiring an instructor coached by Reef Check in each Resort so that they teach them more about the ocean and coral reefs.  The tourists will become part of the solution for the conservation and they will provide the funds so that civic local also can participate in the activities of RC such as: education, monitoring, participations in the management of reefs damaged. 

Training Workshops and monitoring of coral reefs

Actually this Project is training local users in conservation and monitoring using Reef Check protocols (www.reefcheck.org). This protocol contains the important characteristic of being simple, fast but sufficiently scientist to produce information on the health of the reefs in all the country, and this information is comparable for the rest of the world.  Aside from being valuable information to be used by the localities, also the results in the global database will be published in (www.reefcheck.org/datamanagement) for the global understanding and the search of the solution of the health of the coral reefs. 

Reef Check gives chats to students of high school and to local divers about the conservation of coral reefs as more profound trainings, including practices in the field for the execution of the monitoring.  Also, the training for coaches forms part of the program of training of RC in tourist destinies.  The divers are educated giving them tools to monitor and to observe the resources that they see and use each day.  This helps RC establish a network of simple and economic monitoring in a national level, a very important attribute in third world countries. 

 Summary of results found to the date with the monitoring Reef Check:  

·        Global they were reported 0% of lobsters in a 83% of the reefs that indicates severe fishing, there was a significant slope of the abundance of lobster in the Atlantic. 

·        Four species of fish are in critical conditions:  The groupers were absent in the 82% of the deep little reefs of the Caribbean, only eight reefs reported more than one fish.  The Pollack, fish parrot, the fish napoleon were absent in the 95%, 89% and 88% respectively of the reefs of the Peaceful Indus.

·        Globally, the coverage of main hard coral was 32%.  The% of coverage of hard choir was greater in the reefs that did not have impacts anthropogenic that in those of greater level of such impacts. Only 34 reefs had greater hard choir coverage 70% and none greater of 85%. 

·        The covering by algae was greater in exposed reefs to outflows of residual water.

 • In the developing cities, the protected Marine Areas have shown some advances. 5 out of 10 indicators of fish and 1 out of 10 indicators of invertebrates were significantly more abundant inside the protected Marine Areas.