over such immense and growing wealth amid growing hardship for most everyone else. Rather than trumpeting another bumper year for the UK’s international super rich, the front page of the Sunday Times itself somewhat incongruously led with the news that Conservative Lord Ashcroft, who virtually owns the state of Belize in Central America, intends to give away half his £1.2 billion fortune. Its News Review section was given over to an article entitled “Broke” by David Boyle, an economist and author, who is set to publish a book entitled, Broke: Who killed the Middle Classes.

As the newspaper noted on its inside pages, “The rich are accelerating away from the rest of us: the top 1,000 have added £35.4 billion to their wealth in a single year, a gain2 (1983--1984) explored Martinique. In 1986, ECORECIF focused on the islands Saint-Barthélémy, Saint-Martin and Anguilla. In Martinique, eight specialists on corals, fishes, marine phanerogams, mollusks, gorgonians and sponges explored 18 localities around the island by scuba-diving. The cruises resulted in several scientific papers and reports \[[@pone.0173859.ref034], [@pone.0173859.ref035]\], and also, especially for CORANTILLES 2 in Martinique, in films and conferences to increase the local awareness of the marine environment.

Between 2010 and 2012, a study on the assessment of the health of Martinique mangroves focused on the epifauna associated with red-mangrove roots, proposing the use of sponges as bioindicators. This study requested by the Regional Direction of the Environment remained unpublished, however three local biologists were trained and then advised by three sponge specialists. The fieldwork was done by snorkeling