A guide for planners and managers - IUCN

PART III
Case Histories of Marine Protected Areas
12. Montego Bay, Jamaica: A Marine Park
Under NGO Management
Environmental challenges
Montego Bay is one of the Caribbean’s leading tourist centers (Taylor, 1993) and, largely
as a result of this, has one of the most threatened near-shore coral reef ecosystems
in the region (Hughes, 1994; Jameson et al., 1995; Jameson and Williams, 1999).
Montego Bay Marine Park (the Park) is a mosaic of marine communities that includes
seagrass beds, mangrove islands, beaches, and had some of Jamaica’s best coral
reefs. The land is joined to the ocean through rivers, wetlands, and coastal watersheds.
Jamaicans have benefited in the past from this ecosystem through the provision of
fishes, conch and lobster. Montego Bay can be recalled as a scenic coastline with
beautiful beaches, near-shore reefs, freshwater wetlands, and mangrove islands.
Through tourism, the Park is the focal point of the economic and social health of
Montego Bay and its environs.
In Montego Bay, significant changes in land use and hydrology have been
occurring for the past 500 years. Several events in the coastal ecosystem most likely
had the largest impacts on marine communities:
• The development of the Freeport and Seawind Island resort area by the filling in
of mangrove forests and islands in 1967 and the reclamation of the entire waterfront
area in the mid-1970s;
• The change in drainage patterns and nutrient loading of coastal rivers and estuaries
associated with a growing human population and inadequate infrastructure;
• The bulkheading of coastlines, loss of coastal vegetation, and changes in the
quality of storm-water runoff; and,
• Natural impacts such as Hurricane Allen in 1980, Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and
the sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) die-off in 1983-84.
Two watersheds drain into the Park—Great River and Montego River (Figure
III-11). These carry the inland pollutants to the Park waters. Coastal mangroves, other
wetland areas, and seagrass beds that provide breeding, feeding and nursery grounds
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