FOBB 2021 Year End Report
As we enter into the third year of COVID-19 and its variants, the Board of Directors of the Friends of Bonne Bay want you to know that despite this unfortunate crisis, we are still progressing in our mandate to help protect Bonne Bay. Early in 2021 the Board applied for a research grant from the Centre for Social Enterprise, Memorial University and MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems) to support a research project. The project, “State of the Bay: An Historical Study of the Inter-tidal and Marine Ecology of Bonne Bay”, was designed to assess the "state of the environment" of Bonne Bay, to determine the extent to which its marine ecosystem is resilient and healthy, and to identify what changes have occurred in recent decades to its physical, biological, and ecological components.
In the summer of 2021 we hired a graduate student at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, Ms. Hadiya Bamragha, to prepare a draft report. This draft has been recently completed and FOBB Board members, led by Dr. Antony Berger, are in the process of reviewing the report and making revisions for a final draft.
There has been interest expressed by the FOBB Board to complete this work by early spring, and if conditions allow, to provide an overview of the research findings, to make a presentation to the Bonne Bay communities, and to seek feedback from the FOBB membership as well as other local community members. This may in fact be limited to a virtual presentation with the summary document being circulated through email.
The Board members of FOBB feel that this project, and the “State of the Bay” report which is under development, will assist the local communities to understand the complex issues related to maintaining a resilient and healthy Bonne Bay, and lead the way to further research in the future.
If you have questions and/or concerns related to this initiative, please feel free to contact us at: friendsofbonnebay@gmail.com
Thank you, and stay safe, Board of Directors, FOBB.