Western Caribbean Hub
Photo by Ryan Pernofski
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Solar Powered in Roatán
We helped the Polo’s Water Association secure funding to install solar panels on their wastewater treatment plant, reducing their energy consumption by about 80% each month. The Polo’s Water Association’s wastewater treatment plant in Roatán, Honduras is responsible for keeping nearly 30 million gallons of raw sewage out of West End’s coastal environment each year—sewage…
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Sustainable Tourism in México
Together with our partners, we trained nearly 130 tourism operators on best practices for coral reef conservation throughout México, Belize and Honduras this year. Each year, about 22 million people visit Quintana Roo, México. The Caribbean coastline offers beautiful clear blue waters, white sand beaches, and easy access to the second-largest reef system in the…
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Resilience in Honduras
When COVID-19 hit, the Roatán Marine Park lost 85% of its revenue. But through CORAL’s partnership, they were able to prioritize patrols and continue protecting their coral reefs. Like many businesses and organizations in Honduras’ Bay Islands, the Roatán Marine Park (RMP) is almost entirely reliant upon tourism—85% of its operating budget is tied to…
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The Women Behind the Scenes
Our three community scientists in Honduras brought improved fishing practices to the Mesoamerican Reef by building important relationships with fishers. Paola Urrutia, Greissi Lizeth Villatoro, and Ana Bessy Valdez spend their days building relationships with fishers. As our community scientists in Honduras, they travel every morning to popular fisher landing points and meet with the…
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Finding Resilience in Honduras
As Executive Director of the Roatán Marine Park, Francis Lean can relate to her tourist clientele—she used to be one of them. Originally from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, Lean used to join the 1.6 million people who visited Roatán on vacation each year. Roatán is one of the three main islands that make up…
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The Women Behind the Science
It’s 6:45 a.m. when Paola Urrutia arrives at Tela Bay. She makes her way down to the water, finds the spot where the fishermen will disembark after their morning catch, and sits down to wait. On the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras, Tela Bay sits at the bottom of a gently sloping tropical forest, marked…
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CORAL Helps Revitalize Bay Island Economies in Honduras
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprecedented economic crisis across the globe—particularly in countries and regions that are highly dependent upon tourism revenue. In Honduras, for example, eight percent of the GDP comes from tourism. Spring break is one of their most popular travel periods when tourists from around the world flock to the Bay…
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Coral Reefs in Roatán Thrive with Clean Water
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL), our partners in the Bay Islands of Honduras, and the people of Roatán celebrated a major win as a decade of work recently came to fruition when the island passed clean water standards for the first time since monitoring began in 2013. The island of Roatán, part of the Bay…
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Raising Chickens and Bees to Save Coral Reefs
Coral reefs provide an important source of food and income for coastal and island communities around the world. But more than 55 percent of reefs are threatened by overfishing globally. Overfishing not only disrupts the delicate ecology of coral reefs, it also negatively impacts the local communities that depend on them. If fishers are unable…