Madagascar’s west coast is full of mangroves but fishermen have declared some area soff limits seeking to ensure future catches. Thomas of Blue Ventures, a British marine conservation group, said that the communities chose to close several sites for four months of the year, to allow the crabs and fish to reproduce.
In and around the town of Belo-sur-mer there were nearly 500 acres of mangroves chosen to pilot the project in the coastal forests that cover 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles) of Madagascar. These thick mangrove swamps are home to mud crabs, known formally as Scylla serrata, whose catches are the economic mainstay of this region.
Antanimanimbo is a hamlet of a few wooden huts built on a finger of sand between the ocean and the mangrove. Its 100 residents live by the rhythm of the tides. Jean-Francois, the 62-year-old vice president of the village’s fishing association, said that there used to be so many crabs in the mangrove. Now there’s just a few. That makes me worry for future generations.
According to the group an area of 120 hectares are closed to allow the crabs to recover from years of overfishing, which had depleted the stocks. Some organizations proposed to use special nets and the creation of reserves as the only solutions to protect mangroves. Jean-Francois said that the entire village respects the ban because we organised meetings and discussions to think about protecting our fishing zone.
To enforce the ban, the community enacted a “dina”, a local law that every one agrees to abide by. Anyone who violates the ban can be fined by the community. Blue Ventures has a technique to introduce this system to bring fishermen to see villages where this has worked. Blue Ventures’ goal is to expand this model across Madagascar’s southwest coast to help communities that are seeing their natural resources dwindle, whether it’s crabs, fish, octopus or sea cucumbers, all types of sea life are affected.
