The Caribbean’s billion dollar dive industry is under serious threat from coastal and marine pollution, latest reports from the United Nations Environment Programme have revealed.<\/P><\/p>\n
In its Caribbean Environment Outlook 2005 report, UNEP said that the continuing destruction of healthy coral reefs, the main attraction of the region’s dive tourism, will have a direct impact on the region’s tourism revenue<\/P><\/p>\n
UNEP estimated that the Caribbean currently attracts approximately 5.7 million of the world’s 10 million suba divers.<\/P><\/p>\n
Studies have shown that marine tourism generates revenue in excess of $385 billion worldwide and is credited with earning nearly half of the Caribbean’s gross national product.<\/P><\/p>\n
The UNEP organisation has now expressed concern that this branch of tourism could be threatened if the respective Caribbean nations do not make reef conservation a high priority and let reefs be destroyed through coral bleaching and other man-made damaging factors.<\/P><\/p>\n
Although the Bahamas is still considered to have one of the healthier coral reef eco-systems in the region, marine biologists warn that action must be taken soon to avoid conditions such as in Jamaica where destruction has led to erosion of the beaches.<\/P><\/p>\n
Source: Karin Herig, The Tribune<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN warns of pollution impact on region's billion-dollar dive industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}