The Caribbean’s oceans are deeply con­nect­ed to the lives of the peo­ple who call this re­gion home. That con­nec­tion is both his­toric and con­tem­po­rary. No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott fa­mous­ly wrote that “the sea is his­to­ry” when speak­ing about these is­lands. To­day, the oceans con­tin­ue to play a cru­cial role in Caribbean life, sus­tain­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, fish­eries, tourism and trans­porta­tion.

The world’s coral reefs are run­ning out of time to re­cov­er be­tween in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent ma­rine heat­waves and glob­al bleach­ing events, with cli­mate change dri­ving a long-term de­cline in coral cov­er, a new glob­al as­sess­ment has found.

For­mer PNM Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning’s of­fer to seek the chair­man­ship of the PNM’s More res­ig­na­tions hit PNM’s San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy has been wel­comed by past and present PN­Mites and south­ern­ers.

For­mer PNM min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning’s de­ci­sion to en­ter the po­lit­i­cal fray at this time and seek the San Fer­nan­do East chair­man­ship is strate­gic and well timed, and demon­strates the dri­ven sta­bil­i­ty she rep­re­sent­ed as a min­is­ter and along­side her late hus­band, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has said.