As part of the permit, Rijkswaterstaat requested an ecological monitoring and evaluation framework guideline to accompany the permit-application for the activities of BOPEC (Bonaire) and Nustar (St. Eustatius), related to the activities of the loading and unloading of oil and oil-related-products. IMARES has been asked to develop a tailored guideli...
The problem of roaming livestock is a major impediment to agricultural development and nature conservation on St. Eustatius, as it also typically is on other islands in the region. In support of a government-led culling program, we here conducted a baseline study of livestock abundance and distribution on the island in the final quarter of 2013.
In this study we present a fishery independent survey of the finfish populations at depths ranging from 5-30 m in the shallow reef habitats around the island of St. Eustatius.
Queen conch (Lobatus gigas (Strombidae; Gastropoda) is a large, long-lived marine gastropod that is widely distributed throughout the coastal zones of the Wider Caribbean region. Because of concern for its future the species was listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1...
Quantitative habitat mapping and description form the basis for understanding the provisioning of ecosystem services and habitat connectivity, and hence provide an essential underpinning for marine spatial planning, management and conservation. Including patch reef habitats, total hard coral-scape habitat for the St. Eustatius Marine Park amounted ...
A semi-detailed landscape-based vegetation map (scale: 1: 37,500) based on field data from 1999 has been available as an update of Stoffers’ 1956 map of the Lesser Antillean island of St. Eustatius, Netherlands Caribbean, but up to now was never finalized or published. In this report we complete the documentation of that map to provide new insights...
In October 2011 an expedition took place to the Saba Bank, on board of the ship the Caribbean Explorer II. Main aim of the expedition was collecting data on underwater fauna and coral reefs. Apart from that data were collected on nutrients, water flow, sponges and seabirds and marine mammals. Data on the last group were collected by deploying acous...
