Many of the worlds coral reefs are on the coastline of developing nations

Fishermen in Kenya are often in the intermediate stages of development, where they have the technology to plunder their reefs but not the institutions to protect them.
Credit: Joshua Cinner

Declining catches from fisheries pose a real and immediate problem for fishermen in developing countries such as Kenya.

Declining catches mean that fishers often need to travel further afield to catch the fish they need to survive.
Credit: Joshua Cinner

Larger boats allow fishers to travel further afield

The catch if usually sorted and sold to fish trader on the beach.
Credit: Joshua Cinner

The fish then head off to the market to be sold, as in this Madagascar fish market.

Marine Protected Areas work quite well at all levels of community development. These have, on average, about three times the amount of fish compared to areas outside the protected zones, and up to sixteen times the fish of the most degraded places.

We need to look at a combination of measures to get the coral reefs and their fish through the danger period when the human community is undergoing development. To do this we need to promote strategies such as fisheries closures while at the same time tackling poverty as a root cause of the degradation of reefs and their fish stocks

Free copyright is granted for use of these images in conjunction with ARC Centre of Excellence news stories