“We are proud of this work”: in Fiji, a village restores corals and revives fishing

It has been decades since locals have seen sharks along the reef off the coast of Naidiri, a small village in Fiji. But their efforts to protect fishing grounds by restoring thousands of corals have paid off.

It all started in 2009 when Manoa Duwai convinced the residents of his village to create a protected area within their usual fishing area on the coast of this Pacific island state, worried about the low number of fish he was catching and their small size.

“Imagine what it will be like in 10, 15, 20 years,” said Mr. Duwai after a fishing trip which yielded only a few tiny young fish. “What species will remain in our usual fishing zone? We have to do something.”

He then approached the village elders with a proposal to protect part of their fishing area. To start, an area of ​​30 by 40 meters inside the reef.

It didn't take long for the project to bear fruit: larger fish found refuge in the protected area, then dispersed into neighboring waters.

Over time, the village expanded the protected area, now a 280 meter by 240 meter space, flanked by a similarly sized area they now call "the fridge", closed temporarily to replenish fish stocks.

Mr Duwai's vision of an abundant marine habitat capable of supporting his village of 147 people has received praise around the world, with academics and charities coming from far and wide to collect his ideas.

In 2011, a youth group from Naidiri was established to manage what they call the "taboo zone", and they are the ones working to restore the corals and promote a healthy ecosystem. In 2023 alone, they have restored 18,000 corals and 10,000 mangrove trees.

“When we started, we were little children,” Joseva Kunagado, 21, who leads this team, told AFP. “We took barrels, cut them in half, tied a rope to them and pulled them. We had to walk maybe 20 minutes to get corals, come back and plant them,” he says. Today, he assures us, “we are very happy with the work accomplished, because we have seen big changes.”

The protected area that Mr. Kunagado and his friends developed is overflowing with coral and is now home to hundreds of heat-resistant "super corals" that could protect the village from the effects of rising water temperatures. Sharks have started to return to the protected area.

“When it started to come back, different types of fish species, invertebrates, everything came back, I was the happiest person in the village,” reports Mr. Duwai.

Mr. Kunagado says he saw sharks the morning of the AFP visit. And “we didn't expect (...) to see tourists, researchers, university students coming, so we are proud of this work,” he says.

Researchers are interested not only in how the village of Naidiri has protected its marine ecosystem, but also in the corals that show extraordinary resistance to heat.

During a heatwave earlier this year, Mr Duwai recalls, water temperatures reached up to 39°C and widespread bleaching affected the thousands of planted corals. At such temperatures, most corals should have died, he says, but 20% survived: the “super corals.”

“The only corals we have here now are those that survived these 38, 39 degrees,” he notes. Now, Duwai points out, Naidiri is transplanting its heat-resistant corals to deeper, cooler waters near the capital Suva to better protect them against future heat waves.