What are the goals of the program?

The Marianas RC&D wants to establish a program by which the public can become more involved in coral reef management and monitoring efforts on Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). To accomplish this, we will work with key target groups to increase their exposure to coral reef management challenges and their involvement in collecting valuable information to improve coral reef management.

So how are we going to accomplish this, you might ask?

There are three government agencies in the CNMI charged with regulating coral reefs. They are the Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Coastal Resources Management (CRM), and the Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW). They do a lot of good work on these islands and all three of them already utilize volunteers in some capacity.

The MRC&D wants to help these government agencies expand their volunteer utilization. We want to work with these agencies to help set up three volunteer programs that will serve the dual purpose of educating the public about coral reef management issues and help the agencies collect valuable data about coral reef health.

Specifically, MRC&D wants to involve members of key target groups that have the most to gain from a sound coral reef management strategy, namely dive shop owners, fishermen, anyone else that makes a living off of the coral reefs, and students.

As previously mentioned, we have three activities planned. We want volunteers to engage in revegetation efforts on Saipan (and maybe Rota), water quality monitoring, and we want them to participate in a macrofauna survey. All of the island agencies are doing some work in each of these areas, so the MRC&D is going to work with the agencies and the volunteers to develop a volunteer action strategy that will help the agencies accomplish their goals and that will best utilize volunteers' time.

In doing this over the course of a year, we hope to increase the public's understanding of coral reef issues in the CNMI.

I understand that I have told you probably sounds extremely vague. I did that on purpose. Six months from now, I don't want a volunteer or an agency head to say something like, "Hey Angelo, back in April, you wrote on the MRC&D blog that every volunteer was going to (fill in the blank)."

The specifics will come soon. I promise.

In the meantime, please help us by adding a link to our blog on your website (or your blog). The more links to a website, the higher the rank on Internet search engines. We want to publicize all of the good work that is being done in the CNMI, not just by us, but by other groups and agencies as well, so we want this blog to appear towards the top when people use Internet searches engines.