The Kingdom’s first marine conservation NGO plans to help local community members protect Cambodia’s diverse ocean life against the threat of illegal fishing and new development. ‘What was once a colourful sea floor teeming with ocean life had been completely wiped out. There was nothing left - just bare sand’, Paul Ferber, a co-founder of Marine Conservation Cambodia, said.

A fishing trawler had dragged a weighted net along the bottom of the sea floor, scraping the oceans bare and taking all the marine life with it. Bottom trawling - the marine equivalent to clear-cutting forests - catches everything in its path, rips out coral reefs and stirs up sediments that can suffocate life on the sea floor. As much as 90 percent of what ends up in the net is by-catch, unwanted marine sea life that is useless to fishermen but integral to the ocean ecology, according to Greenpeace. ‘It can take many years for an ecosystem to recover from something like that’, Ferber said.

It was that dive nine months ago that inspired Ferber to increase his conservation efforts. Ferber, along with Bora Raan and Bart Kluskens, founded Marine Conservation Cambodia, the Kingdom’s only NGO dedicated to conserving Cambodia’s oceans. Bottom trawling is not the only threat to Cambodia’s sea life. Other types of illegal, damaging fishing techniques that involve cyanide or dynamite are common farther off the coast. As the islands off of Sihanoukville become popular tourist destinations, a development boom promises to release sediment into the water, potentially smothering the coral reefs, Kluskens said. Increased scuba diving also poses a danger. Currently, there are no mooring buoys at the most popular dive spots, meaning many boats accidentally drop their anchors on the reefs.

But despite the threats, Cambodia still has abundant marine life. Gianluca Lamberti, a trainer for Reefcheck, the largest coral reef monitoring program in the world, who is working with Marine Conservation Cambodia, said: ‘On any dive, you’ll see 10 to 20 seahorses. This is incredible. There’s not a place in the world where a person can see that’. Seahorses are an important indicator species, because they are particularly sensitive to pollution, Lamberti said. The government has recently classified seahorses as endangered, making them illegal to fish.

With the help of the Koh Rong Samleom community, the organisation is constructing an island office, replete with bathroom, restaurant and bungalows, where it hopes to house scuba divers interested in learning ocean-conservation techniques. During the divers’ conservation training, they will be monitoring the reefs by counting indicator species, Lamberti said. The biggest focus of Marine Conservation Cambodia, however, is on land. The group has targeted people on Koh Rong Samleom, an island near ecologically diverse sea grass areas and coral reefs, to educate about marine conservation.

To arrange tours to Sihanoukville & Koh Rong Samleom contact: info@asia-adventures.com

Edited from The Phnom Penh Post (10-12-08)