| Abstract |
Samaná Bay, a priority site for protection and one of the largest and most productive estuaries in the country, is an important humpback whale breeding area and home to large numbers of endemic species and important habitats including mangroves and seagrass beds, which in addition to providing spawning and recruitment areas, have been shown globally to sequester carbon on the same order as terrestrial forests.
Dwindling vital marine resources and biodiversity in a highly complex seascape increasingly threatened by unsustainable uses are risking the region's main economy and the livilihoods of hundreds fishers and tourism dollars generated from whale watching. |
