What impact are community lead temporary and permanent closures having on the health of marine ecosystems?

Are communities selecting closure areas that will have the biggest impact in terms of community gain, ecosystem health and resilience of reefs into the future?

To help us answer these questions, this month we continued to build our community biodiversity monitoring team. 11 people were trained in methodologies for fish, macro-invertebrates, sea urchins and benthic cover surveys. The teams were made up of people from 5 communities across Pemba and Unguja we’re working with to implement temporary or permanent closures, representatives of the Department of Fisheries Development Tanzania, and the Mwambao team.

The training and surveys have been carried out as part of a 4-year project with partners CORDIO East Africa. Joan Kawaka and Peter Musembi lead the training for our team.