St Vincent and the Grenadines were one of the first Caribbean countries to recognise the importance of the marine ecosystems and begin putting in place legislation to protect it.
The Tobago Cays Marine Park was one of the first marine protected areas in the Caribbean, with horseshoe reef being one of the most well preserved, if not the best example of a healthy reef system in the whole of the Caribbean.
Recognising the importance of healthy marine ecosystems is an important step forward, and the income from tourism to these protected areas far outweighs any income from destructive short-term activities.
Seagrass is an important ecosystem and habitat, found in a lot of coastal, shallow water areas from the tropics to the poles. There are 72 different species of seagrass, sometimes growing in such huge and dense underwater meadows they can be seen from space. Seagrass is named for the grass like leaves visible above the sediment they grow in, often confused with seaweed, seagrass is actually more closely related to flowering plants seen on land, with roots, stems and leaves. Seagrass is a highly productive ecosystem, providing food and shelter to a huge diversity of animals, cleaning the water, nutrient up cycling, as well as sequestering vast amounts of carbon into the huge rhizome root system (up to 8x more than the equivalent size forest on land). Seagrasses are known as ecosystem engineers as they modify their surroundings creating a unique habitat. Unfortunately seagrass meadows around the world are being lost at an alarming rate due to a variety of human activities, luckily there are lots of attempts being made around the world to protect, rebuild and restore seagrass beds, including in the Tobago Cays Marine Park.
