Tonight he goes deeper into the story, speaking to several stakeholders, fishermen and tour guides, who played a vital part in monitoring and reporting sick corals out on the reef. Jose Sanchez told us more.

Ninon Martinez, Marine Program Manager, UB-ERI
"So this whole project that we have, a big part of it is training stakeholders to respond to Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. As they're out on the reef, as they see it, they can do it."

Nicole Craig
"What are the benefits of having the stakeholders directly involved? How?"

Ninon Martinez
"They're already there.They're there every day. They're already there. And the truth is, I need to put gas in my boat, write a memo and all of these things before I can go out in two weeks when they're already there, when Pedro's literally going out in his boat tomorrow to the same spot I'm trying to go."

Gabriela Ugarte
"Well, the fishermen have been very helpful in that process.They were the ones that, at the beginning of this disease breakout, would reach out to our rangers at Half Moon Caye, specifically and inform them. Because the fishermen were not 100% sure of exactly what was affecting our corals, but they definitely knew that something was wrong. So they were very influential in that process of identifying sites or find spots that actually have the disease."

Fisher
"When I have my lead time and these guys stop in the island here, because most of the time here we have feedback and some areas that I might know and they could visit and see the diseases themselves."

Fisher
"When we meet the rangers, we always do that when we see something strange, we always tell them, you know what? We see this and that in a reef or in some way in a departure."

Tour guide
"I've pretty much been to the sites where all these sites are, pretty much where disease are, but also other sites that normally go to.Then I always try to come out and tell the guys over it's like, hey, just take a look around the area, see if maybe some of the areas you've worked before, and then maybe if it's a new site, then you can target a new site where you can avoid more spreading of the disease itself."

Ninon Martinez
"So one of the first things we're going to do is hire some staff to be the point people to do the training to communicate with the stakeholders. Be like, hey, how are things going? Where do you think you're seeing the disease? Do you need help, feedback, all of these things? So communication is the most important line in this whole thing."

Nicole Craig
"Corals don't always get better. So we did a small study in front off Goffs Caye, and we were working at three different sites. And at these sites, we treated 80 colonies. And after observing them for 90 days, we found that over 70% of them we considered successful because we did not need to reapply treatment more than twice. But of course, the remaining 30%, when we went back, the lesion continued to spread, so we considered that unsuccessful."

"What we want to know in the future is what happens on the long term, because 90 days is a pretty short period of time, and so beyond that, what happens? So we're expanding our study in Glover's Reef to see what happens after six months, after one year, and that study is ongoing. We just established that site a month ago."

Jose Sanchez
"The perspective of the fishers shed light on the complexities surrounding the Blue Economy and the challenges faced by coral reefs. It is defined as a sustainable ocean based economy comprising of a range of economic sectors and related policies that aim to foster economic growth and social progress while maintaining the health of our oceans and coasts."

"There are many multifaceted challenges faced every day by the reef, including the impacts of climate change and other manmade problems such as ship groundings on the barrier reef system. It is important for more government led financing and effective solutions to protect the reef and the blue economy that depends on it. Jose Sanchez reporting."

The project is still in progress with an aim to promote its Healthy Reef Initiative.