Kitty Mangroves taking on the ocean waves 🌊

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]What is up raft leaders? Welcome back to my channel. We are back at the kitty seaw wall. What I want to show you today is what's happening with the mangroves.

[00:00:11]I've talked about mangroves in the past and you know my opinion. The mangroves are not necessarily the best solution here in the city that they might be good for protecting the coast that is outside the population centers. But I noticed some changes happening here and I thought I'd bring it to attention because causes me to question how effective these mangroves are and how effective they will be in future. Because as I approached the seaw wall this morning and my morning run, I noticed that there was a clear patch, vacant patch in the mangroves that you could see through to the Atlantic Ocean again. And I thought I'd investigate it and this is what I'd found. So, what I found. So, let me show you what's happening with these mangros here at Kitty Seaw Wall.

[00:01:04]So, guys, it's a Thursday morning in Guyana. It's Thursday, the 7th of May, 2020 6. It's the 60th anniversary month of Guyana's independence.

[00:01:22]That's looking down Irving Street.

[00:01:26]south on Irving Street and of course next door is next to it is the parallel street road and haven't spoken very much in about these buildings in the past.

[00:01:39]These are a couple of monstrosities that are being built on along Irving along uh the Singen Road and that one is a apartment building or maybe it's a hotel we'll see in future.

[00:02:00]That's Camp Ghana Army military base in the city.

[00:02:08]That's looking out west along the seaw wall road towards Kingston. What we're here to talk about is these mangros. Now, somebody asked me to take a closer look at these mangoes to see in fact if it's one species. It turns out that there are a number of trees growing up here. So, for example, this one looks like something we used to call shame baby in Guyana. I don't know what the uh name for it is the biological the botanical name is. And of course this is another species not mangroves has a fruit on it that looks familiar.

[00:03:00]Right. These are some kind of fruit not edible of course.

[00:03:13]So these are not all mangrove trees. However, what is happening here with this mangrove is this. So when I came out here this morning, I noticed a vacant spot in these mangroves is this these mangroves have gotten so dense recently that you can't really see the ocean anymore from Kitty. When I came out here, I noticed you could see this gap in the mangroves allows you to see the Atlantic Ocean. So I came to investigate further and this is what I found. So, the first thing I assume is that somebody had gotten out here and cut them, right? Used a cutlus or some kind of uh instrument to cut them down. But on closer inspection, I realized that the sea is ripping them out by the root. So if you look along the floor along the ground, what you see is these dried up mangrove uh trees.

[00:04:32]And what is happening is that as the tide comes in and it is about to come in right now. that's coming in. These waves are actually ripping them up, ripping these mangrove trees out of the soil.

[00:04:51]Now, why I'm why I made that conclusion is because if you look further along, right? All right. So, if you look further along the coast here, see all these mangroves uh trunks, the thin trunks that are bent towards the shore.

[00:05:14]Then come around to the side here and you see more of them. All right. So all along all along the shore there are these mangrove trunks that are washing up.

[00:05:32]And if you look out between the trees, you look out there, what you notice is that they are being bent and broken and ripped out of the ground. Right?

[00:05:48]This is what is happening at the outer edge of these mangrove forest. So what's happening is that the tide when it comes in the waves the force of the waves are ripping up these mangroves and washing them onto the shore.

[00:06:15]Now you can argue that this is what is going to happen over time. I think somebody I don't remember who said that this is one way to build up biomass and build up the uh the coast. In other words, it's a way to accumulate biomass and reclaim land by simply growing these mangroves out here. I don't think that justifies growing the mangroves out here, but it's an observation, right? These are the mangrove trees that are growing out here at Kitty.

[00:06:54]And what is happening is that the tide is so powerful that it is ripping up the young trees out of the soil. Now, if you look out, there's a spit of land.

[00:07:06]There's a jetty behind that mangrove, right? So, there's a spit of land fish mangroves are growing on out to the ocean all along the coast.

[00:07:25]This is happening. I'm assuming this is happening with the mangroves and whatever vegetation is growing up here along the coast. So you can see you can look between these all the way out to the edge.

[00:07:46]It's also happening the outer edge. In other words, the ocean tides are ripping up these mangros and washing them onto the shore. It's also doing that with garbage while the garbage is still being dumped into the ocean here and washing up onto the shore all along the coast.

[00:08:14]But what is it that I'm talking about in this video? What I'm talking about is the fact that these mangroves may in fact not be as effective as we assume they are in normal uh tide normal ocean. I think we're going to have a spring tide for the next couple of weeks in Guyana.

[00:08:40]What happens is in April and May during the spring tide, the waves would wash onto the shore would simply I think the last few years we've seen it the waves lapping up against this um seaw wall and some some places washing up onto the splashing over the wall basically onto the road next door this coastal road.

[00:09:10]We haven't seen that recently.

[00:09:13]And part of it is the the fact that these mangroves can uh break the waves, but in breaking the waves, it's creating what you saw, that is the mangroves are being ripped out of the soil and tossed up against the coast.

[00:09:35]And that's just the normal tide. So if you're saying that this mangrove is going to protect you from sea level rise, I don't think that is necessarily true. What the mangrove does is protects you from coastal erosion.

[00:09:55]And yes, these dead trees that are washing up on the shore will event form part of the biomass and builds up the coast, but they're not going to protect you in an emergency, in a catastrophe, in a tsunami or or in the rising level of the sea.

[00:10:16]Because the mangroves are not a wall, >> right? The wall is what protects you from the rising sea level. The mangroves protects you from waves, coastal erosion.

[00:10:30]And that's the point here. The point is that people seem to think that the mangrove is a panacea, that it's in fact a substitute for sea defense.

[00:10:41]Mangroves are not sea defense. They're simply protection from coastal erosion. But it takes a little bit more of sophisticated understanding and questioning to ascertain what the value the real value of mangroves are. And as I can show you here, right, more mangroves are washing up being broken off by the ocean, by the tides, by the waves and washing up on the shore. The mangroves simply protect against coastal erosion, right?

[00:11:22]Not necessarily sea level rise. Just thought I'd bring that to your attention. If you want to see more content like this and I'll talk more about this in future because there's a whole lot of discussion that has to take place about how we develop the um population centers in Guyana, particularly Georgetown and its surrounding areas and as far as what these mangroves are contributing.

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[00:12:00]Later.