A Ray of Hope - Community-Run Conservation

Today I was able to travel a little ways south to Kuruwitu, a small village that happens to own and operate the first community-initiated marine park in Kenya.

The park is accessible by a small strip of land between huge, gated mzungu (white person) houses. There they have a small booking office, a bathroom, store room, and changing room as well as a small private beach area. Of course the main attraction is the 1km stretch of protected reef where the fish abundance and diversity is pretty impressive, especially considering that many of fish I saw were juveniles. Triggerfish, batfish, parrotfish, damselfish, butterflyfish, pufferfish, just to name a few. Plus 4 fat octopus!

Do you see the giant pufferfish? 

While we were walking out through the lagoon for our second snorkel I asked our guide, John, to tell us a little more about the park. The more I heard the more impressed I was.
The story went pretty much like this:

"When our grandfathers lived here there were many many fish and everyone could fish and make a living, because they used good fishing gears (methods). But now the grandsons, they use fishing nets with small eyes (holes) which take everything, even the very small fish. And soon there are not enough fish for us to make a living anymore. So we did research and learned about closing areas like this. The fishermen came together and said, lets do a trial: we will close this area for 6 months, and then see what happens. But after just two months, the scientists doing research here said the area was already getting better. And the homeowners saw that we were doing good things and gave us donations. This let us buy bigger boats to fish out past the reef instead of in here, in the breeding grounds. So after the six months, the fishermen got back together and decided to make this area a closed marine park."

There are tons of triggerfish - which is funny because John told us that 6 years ago there were none, but that they bought 1 pair of fish up the coast - a male and female, brought them here, and they (very) successfully populated the lagoon!

The area was made a "no-take zone" in 2006 which means no fishing or collection of any kind within the park, and also puts a ban on walking across that area. John said that no one in the area was allowed to buy or sell shells or other curio products, which is awesome, as this is often a destructive source of income for coastal peoples.

The coolest thing about this park is that the fishermen themselves saw the need for conservation and took it upon themselves to make it happen. John even told me that at a recent meeting they agreed that the park was doing good things for the area and the fisheries and wanted to expand the range of the park to be 3km of shoreline instead of 1. Following their example, 6 other community-initiated parks have now been established in Kenya and this park continues to offer training to locals and fishermen from other parts of the coast.

For such a shallow area, the corals are pretty prolific. John says that 6 years ago, you wouldn't have seen any of them.  I would like to read some studies to see how true that is...but I'm sure the closing has helped, especially with trampling. 

 All in all, I was very impressed by the Kuruwitu Marine Park and even more so by its history. I think that the existence of community-initiated/run conservation groups like this is a shining ray of hope for developing area coastal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.