A new en­vi­ron­men­tal mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion launched by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment is mak­ing it pos­si­ble for every cit­i­zen to be­come a true stew­ard and pro­tec­tor of the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment.

The Sea In­for­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go—or SeaiTT for short—al­lows cit­i­zens to re­port sight­ings of li­on­fish and oth­er in­va­sive species wreak­ing hav­oc on the T&T en­vi­ron­ment, as well as to re­port oil spills and Sar­gas­sum sea­weed. Cit­i­zens al­so can use the app to re­port any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty spot­ted in the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment.

The app al­so pro­vides vi­tal ma­rine in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing ac­cess maps to beach­es, as well as up­dates on tides, cur­rents, and sea swells.  The Min­istry al­so de­scribes it as “an en­vi­ron­men­tal emer­gency re­sponse plat­form”.

The lat­est en­try in­to Gov­ern­ment’s suite of dig­i­tal prod­ucts, SeaiTT was de­vel­oped by the Min­istry and of­fi­cial­ly launched on Fri­day 6 No­vem­ber 2020, by the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI). It is T&T’s first ever ma­rine en­vi­ron­men­tal mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion.

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the en­vi­ron­ment, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is MP, as­serts:

“The first ever SeaiTT mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion sup­ports Gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal­iza­tion dri­ve, giv­ing a boost to en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and preser­va­tion, while en­hanc­ing cit­i­zens’ ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our pre­cious ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment.”

She is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to get the SeaiTT app. 

“This new plat­form fa­cil­i­tates cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and preser­va­tion, al­low­ing any­one who down­loads the app to launch re­ports with im­ages of any en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly de­struc­tive ma­rine ac­tiv­i­ty to the IMA, who will then take the nec­es­sary ac­tions to ad­dress,” Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is ex­plains in a Min­istry re­lease. 

“This al­lows a large part of the pop­u­la­tion to be ex­tra eyes, work­ing to help the IMA man­age our ma­rine ecosys­tems,” the min­is­ter said.

Act­ing Di­rec­tor of the IMA, Dr. Ra­han­na Ju­man fur­ther un­der­scores the min­is­ter’s point.

“The SeaiTT mo­bile app will of­fer IMA the means to col­late and analyse the da­ta col­lect­ed to see long term pat­terns, trends and re­la­tion­ships, which no doubt will add an­oth­er lay­er to the IMA’s re­search and en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tives,” Dr Ju­man stat­ed dur­ing the of­fi­cial launch of the app last Fri­day.

And Marie Hinds, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, ob­served:

“The SeaiTT app lit­er­al­ly places pow­er in the hands of cit­i­zens to pos­i­tive­ly con­tribute to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­vi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion and man­age­ment.”

Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is says the launch of the app is time­ly, for many rea­sons, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that grad­ual mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to open T&T’s beach­es which have been closed for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time due to COVID-19.

She al­so point­ed to re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al ac­co­lades for To­ba­go’s en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sources and man­age­ment.

“North East To­ba­go re­ceived a pres­ti­gious UN­ESCO des­ig­na­tion as a Man and Bios­phere Re­serve in Oc­to­ber, the largest in the Eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean,” the min­is­ter points out. “We want to main­tain this sta­tus and give our­selves the op­por­tu­ni­ty for more of our en­vi­ron­men­tal spaces to be giv­en in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.”

She adds: “This will ben­e­fit our tourism prod­uct and the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of our en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sources, which—ac­cord­ing to the 5th Na­tion­al Re­port of Trinidad and To­ba­go to the Con­ven­tion on Bi­o­log­i­cal Di­ver­si­ty (CBD) in 2017—are val­ued in the re­gion of US $100 mil­lion per year in terms of soil pro­tec­tion, wa­ter pu­rifi­ca­tion ser­vices, as well as recre­ation and tourism-based ac­tiv­i­ties.”

The SeaiTT mo­bile can be down­loaded for iOS and An­droid plat­forms.