By Owain Johnson-Barnes
Published Apr 25, 2014 8:00 am

Three local environmental projects will be partially funded by the newly-launched Catlin Marine Grant.

The grant, launched by the Bermuda End-to-End Charitable Trust earlier this year and sponsored by Catlin Bermuda, is intended to provide $100,000 of funding over three years for valuable marine research projects.

Chair of the End-to-End Charitable Trust Anne Mello: “A total of nine charities made applications for funds from the Catlin Marine Grant.

“We were able to settle on three deserving projects, run by established organisations, which together meet the goals of the grant.”

The largest of the awards was given to the BREAM project, a research programme aimed at collecting data about the Island’s reefs. Over the past five years, the project has mapped all of the coral reefs on the Bermuda Platform to a Geographic Information System, making the data available to the public.

The grant will help support the project for the next three years, supporting scientific studies of the outer rim of the coral reefs surrounding Bermuda.

Keep Bermuda Beautiful also received a grant to help its Washed Ashore project, through which the charity hopes to look at the garbage washing up on Bermuda’s shores and determine if the pollution is local or coming from overseas.

And the Bermuda National Trust’s Monofilament Recovery and Recycling Programme will also receive a boost through the grant, which will pay for ten new fishing line depository bins to be installed at waterside locations around the island.

President and CEO of Catlin Bermuda Graham Pewter said: “The goal for the three-year life of the Catlin Marine Grant is to encourage projects which have measurable outcomes and are sustainable over time.

“It was our wish, in creating this $100,000 grant, to support meaningful initiatives within the local charitable and scientific community. We are pleased to be able to fulfil this.”