Bermuda Diversity Project (BBP) over the next five years, it was revealed yesterday.

Curator Wolfgang Sterrer told Hamilton Rotarians that the project will be conducted in three phases, beginning with a historical inventory of all information on local species, plants, animals into a data base.

This will be followed by scientists identifying gaps that might have been missed during the initial phase as well as the mapping of the coral reefs.

"The coral reefs will be mapped in detail to provide a baseline of reef health and diversity against which future changes can be assessed,'' Dr.

Sterrer explained at the weekly luncheon at Pier Six on Front Street.

He also said an analysis will be conducted of the complete biodiversity which should identify the reasons for diversity changes.

Dr. Sterrer estimated that the minimum number of Bermuda's current species diversity totaled around 8,000, "surprisingly high in comparison with the 22,000 species listed for Hawaii, a much larger and more diverse group of islands''.

And he told the audience that the Island had experienced at least five catastrophic changes to Bermuda's ecology: The loss of native birds and snails from flooding during the Ice Ages; The near extinction of the cahow and of the local sea turtle population in the 1600s; The near extinction of the local cedar trees in the late 1940s and 1950s; The ecological change of Castle Harbour basin as a result of massive dredging for airport construction in the early 1940s; and The bloom of the green algae Cladophora throughout most inshore waters from 1960 on.

Wolfgang Sterrer MUSEUM MUS