Wild Tobago

This article is the first of a series that focuses on The International Year of the Reef 2018 and the T&T initiative. This week Dr Anjani Ganase, marine scientist, discusses the global impacts of climate change on coral bleaching, and the significance of actions to stem climate change 2018 is the International Year of the Reef (IYOR), a global effort initiated by the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) to strengthen global awareness of the value of coral reef ecosystems. In Trinidad and Tobago, under the banner of IYOR T&T, a group of marine scientists in collaboration with other partners is launching a series of activities and programmes that showcase coral reef biodiversity, their value, the threats they face and opportunities for stewardship and protection. Currently, the effects of rising ocean temperatures compounded by pollution, plastics, sedimentation, overfishing and habitat destruction are threatening the future of coral reefs. Coral reefs are known to...

Dr Anjani Ganase, marine scientist and environmentalist, explains climate change, and how its effects may appear in different places at different times, or not at all in some other places. Understanding climate change and its effects is urgent for small island states. Over the years, discussion of human-induced global warming has slowly transitioned to climate change as scientists began to realise the broader effects of industrial carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions on our planet. While global warming refers specifically to the increase in global temperatures of the atmosphere and oceans, (as a result of the heat trapping capabilities of carbon dioxide emissions - the green house effect), climate change refers to the many other changes directly as a result of CO 2 or because of the rise in atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. Some other physical phenomena that are occurring as a result of higher CO 2 levels and/ or rising temperatures include changes to the physical and chemical n...

This week Pat Ganase discusses the need to make changes in our own lives to adapt to climate change Climate change scientists are monitoring and adjusting the predictions of global temperature rise upward. While the countries that signed to the Paris Agreement of 2015 are working to keep global temperature rise under 2 degrees Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), it is already anticipated that the rise may be higher. Those monitoring the changing climate have observed that for even one-degree rise, the effects – increased precipitation, stronger deadlier storms forming over warming oceans - seem to be growing exponentially. This year’s hurricane season in the Atlantic may be considered evidence, although scientists are slow to conclude that one season may be part of a trend. Ordinary citizens, however, must come to decisions about their homes, their livelihoods and protections for their families, in the face of higher storm events, greater flooding, and the effects thes...

Anjani Ganase, Trinbagonian marine biologist, continues her weekly exploration of islands and the ocean. She hopes to share appreciation for the land and the sea; and to foster awareness of our relationship as islanders with the ocean. This week, she compares lifestyle notes with a native of Papua New Guinea. This feature was first published in the Tobago Newsday, September 29, 2016. Follow Anjani Ganase on twitter: @AnjGanase “Mom and I grew up in the same area as her ancestors, which she can trace back at least to when missionaries first arrived (and started to record history through birth and burial records) over 500 years ago. It’s now thought the earliest people in these islands came some 60,000 years ago.” I was astonished when Terry mentioned this to me; very few people in Trinidad and Tobago can make this claim. Most of us in the Caribbean are either descendants of slaves, indentured labourers or immigrants who willingly moved to start anew in a different pa...