2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE TWELVE - Conservation (§§ 1-16 — 8162) › Subtitle 3 - Water Protection (§§ 231 — 417) › Chapter 22 - Protection, Conservation and Management of Coral Reefs (§§ 241 — 241g) › § 241a - Definitions

For the purposes of this chapter the following terms shall have the meaning and scope expressed below for each, except when the text clearly indicates otherwise:
(a) Territorial waters.— Means the navigable waters under the rule and control of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
(b) Area of reef recovery.— Means those reef areas that have been impacted and degraded by human beings or by natural causes and whose restoration demands that human activity be restricted and even prohibited.
(c) Ecologically sensitive areas.— Means those areas requiring designation and protection for their ecological value.
(d) Artificial reefs.— Means those reefs created and laid by human hands that simulate certain of the [sic] important properties of natural reefs, lead to the propagation of marine species dependent on coral reefs and attract fishermen, sailors and divers, so as to lessen the intensity of the use and the detrimental consequences thereof on the natural coral reefs.
(e) Coral reefs.— Means the ecosystem constituted by corals and their stony skeleton and by other associated marine species, such as marine grasslands.
(f) Coral.— Means all the living or dead organisms classified as:
(1) Stony coral. — Organism of the phylum Cnidaria belonging to the order Scleratinia (including, among others, the brain coral and the staghorn coral).
(2) Horny coral.— Organism of the phylum Cnidaria belonging to the subclass Octocolaria (including the sea fan and other organisms that have not been given a common name).
(3) Black coral.— Organism of the phylum Cnidaria belonging to the order Antipatharia.
(4) Hydrocolaria.— Organism of the phylum Cnidaria belonging to the class Hydrozoa that produces a calcium carbonate (limestone) skeleton.
(g) Department.— Means the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.
(h) Waste product.— Means all garbage, trash, rubbish, rubble, useless articles, ashes, silt, mud or any other disposable materials, whether hazardous or not, solid, liquid, semisolid or of a gaseous nature, produced as a result of domestic, industrial, commercial, agricultural or governmental operations.
(i) Vessel or craft.— Means a floating structure, designed and constructed by an authorized manufacturer, with water displacement capability, which is used or may be used as a motor-propelled means of transportation, or alternately as a boat, speedboat, motorboat, sailboat or jet-ski or any other craft similar or analogous to those listed. The term also includes those homemade structures which meet design and construction requirements similar to those of the structures produced by authorized manufacturers.
(j) Sustainable management.— Means the plan for, biological, commercial, social and administrative actions, among others, that ensure the permanence or survival of the resource and its habitat in healthy conditions.
(k) Person.— Means any natural or juridical person.
(l) Program.— Means the Program for the Protection, Conservation and Management of Coral Reefs established by § 241c of this title.
(m) Secretary.— Means the Secretary of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.
(n) Reef recovery area systems.— Means the various reef recovery areas geographically separate but biologically connected by reproductive and dispersal patterns and by the migratory behavior of reef organisms.
History —July 15, 1999, No. 147, § 3.