The Benioff Ocean Initiative has allocated one million USD to the Ocean Cleanup Project for the Kingston Harbour Bay.
This is a great idea and fantastic news!
Kingston Harbour Bay needs all the attention it can get to restore it to its former glory. It is a Herculean task and requires all the energy in the world.
It would have been even greater if the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) through the Centre for Blue Economy and Innovation partnered with the Benioff Ocean Initiative, to support existing projects that we have been working on for some time to clean up the said harbour bay.
The CMU is very young as a university, at least in this new role. Still, as a significant tertiary educational institution in the maritime sector in the Caribbean, it has a long tradition dating back to the 1970s.
Restoration of the Harbour bay has been one of our central concerns
Since the establishment of the Centre for Blue Economy and Innovation in September 2018, the issue of the restoration of the port has been one of our central concerns (see link: https://cbei.blog/we-can-clean-the-kingston-harbour/), involving not only our university and students, but also the wider community.
The CMU’s main campus is located in the Palisadoes-Port Royal Protected Area. Our students and all staff, alike, see the effects everyday of the thoughtless disposal of household waste into the canals that lead into the bay.
The magic power of oysters
This has lead us to create and execute projects that gear towards actively cleaning up this area. We have copied a project from New York (billionoysterproject.org) in which we want to use the power of the oyster to improve the water quality of the harbour bay.
JamBin
An existing idea was adapted (“SeaBin” from New Zealand) to our local conditions and developed to what we call the “JamBin”, which works as a garbage collector at fixed locations in the bay. This prototype was handed over to an Kingston based NGO which also focuses on harbor restoration efforts (iAspire initiative –https://cbei.blog/iaspire-and-blue-economy/).
Fighting Sargassum Seaweed
We have acquired a special boat for hydrographic research as a donation from a German company. This will be used in a multi-modular, multi-functional role: to fight the issues we face with Sargassum-Seaweed, for hydrographic research, in the initial stages function in the collection of floating garbage in the bay and of course also as a training vessel for our students.
It is important to mention as well that the port restoration project, especially with the use of oysters, was selected by Jamaica as a legacy project for the Jamaican pavilion at the Dubai World Expo 2020/21.
We are all the sadder that our efforts are not yet receiving the necessary attention and financial support. That seems to be one of the main obstacles – to generate public awareness. I hope we can find a way to connect the university and our students with the Ocean Clean Up project. My intention is to motivate young people who have chosen to study the ocean and make it a career.