Summary:
This report presents the most up-to-date information available for the wreck dive sites of Anguilla. This includes the seven established wreck sites (Commerce, Ida Maria, Catheley H, Oosterdiep, Meppel, Lady Vie & Sarah), and the recently relocated lost wreck of the Marva W. This latter wreck is not currently an established dive site due to its deeper depth, but it has the potential to be developed into a technical dive site should it be pursued by dive operators. Most of these wrecks were sunk purposefully to clean up hurricane damaged vessels while providing artificial reef habitat beneficial marine life and therefore the dive industry (although full details for the three older wrecks are still shrouded in some mystery). This report also acts as an introduction for proposed ongoing fish assessments to be conducted on these wrecks by the Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources (DFMR). A rapid assessment was conducted in June 2017 to collect data that can be used a comparative baseline for this ongoing proposed work (see appendix A). This work is needed in order to assess the impact of new legislation that is set to protect these wrecks from fishing later this year. Although such protection has been proposed since the 1990 Road bay clean-up project (see appendix B), to date no protective legislation exists. Amendments to the Fisheries Protection Act and Marine Park Act have been proposed by DFMR since 2013, which were approved by Executive Council in May 2016 and are due for drafting in June 2017. Among these amendments is the call to create closed areas under Schedule 4 of the Fisheries Protection Regulations around the established wreck dive sites.
