Protecting Cambodia’s coastal and marine environments

Supporting community fisheries

While continuing to work with community fisheries inside Cambodia’s new marine protected area, Fauna & Flora is also now working with a new community fishery in the Koh Sdach Archipelago, adopting the same approach of using community-led resource management to drive better protection and management. This site boasts impressive coral reefs and has been identified as a national hotspot for sea turtles, but it is suffering from the effects of overfishing and illegal fishing –both of which the project will look to address over the next few years. The project will support the community fishery in identifying areas of the archipelago that are critical fishing grounds and those that could be no-fish areas to help habitat and stocks to recover.

Protecting Cambodia’s seahorses

A seahorse hotspot has been identified around a small island in the Koh Rong Archipelago with no fewer than six different species of seahorse recorded at this site. The area remains an important diving site in the archipelago, increasingly so for macro divers (those interested in observing smaller marine life such as seahorses); however, these charismatic animals are increasingly being targeted for use in the traditional Asian medicine trade. To make matters worse, growing pressure from bottom-towed fishing gear, underpinned by poor fisheries regulation, means that an unsustainable number of seahorses are being removed from the ocean each year – both deliberately and as bycatch. Fauna & Flora is conducting trade surveys and underwater assessments to understand the impact that this growing pressure is having on wild seahorse populations. Building on this knowledge, we will work with local NGOs and community fisheries to run a social marketing campaign in order to generate awareness of, and pride in, this flagship species and to identify areas that should be better protected.