Tanzania’s long Indian Ocean coastline, and the offshore islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, are home to rich marine ecosystems that help support almost 90% of Tanzania’s coastal communities. Today, these marine ecosystems are increasingly scarce and degraded due to pressures ranging from population growth and climate change to large-scale and more technologically advanced commercial fishing operations.

Mwambao Coastal Community Network helps local communities that manage and depend on Tanzania’s marinescapes to find ways to make them healthier so both people and the fish and corals of the Indian Ocean benefit. This includes developing local fisheries management committees; establishing seasonal closures or fishing regulations to better manage high-value species such as octopus; improving collaborative management with government, particularly in marine protected areas; and coordinating a network of coastal communities.

Mwambao runs a community marine closure program where they support communities to close off sections of their marinescapes to allow them to recover for a period of time. The results have been tremendous and obvious: more and bigger fish and octopus, and in turn more money for their catch.