Coral gardeners bring back Jamaica's reefs, piece by piece

Adapting to climate change in coastal areas means adjusting local fishing and cultivation practices. Residents of Velondriake, a locally managed marine area in southern Madagascar, have introduced seaweed and algae farming as an alternative to fishing. With the help of Blue Ventures, an NGO based in the UK, and the University of Toliara, residents are monitoring their ecosystem and finding new markets for their harvests.

Scientists and conservationists have been pushing for more marine protected areas, regions that restrict human activity to protect marine life. But, they're quickly realizing it’s not about the quantity of mpa’s, but the quality.

In the mid-1990s, a small fishing community in Baja California Sur stopped fishing to give their depleted reef a chance to recover. Thirty years later, Cabo Pulmo National Park stands as one of the most documented cases of marine conservation success in the world. Scientific monitoring confirmed a 463% increase in marine biomass within a decade of protection. Drawing on this evidence, marine scientists have developed the Marine Prosperity Areas (MPpAs) framework, a replicable model that integrates ecological restoration with community well-being.

Lobster is a crucial economic resource in New England, but entanglements with the fishing line from lobster traps are a major cause of death for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Scientists and lobstermen are testing ropeless, on-demand gear that minimizes the risk for whales and allows fishing to continue in areas that would otherwise be closed for months as the whales pass through.

Nonprofits and coastal communities are popularizing sustainable fishing practices and fishery management to allow ocean ecosystems to bounce back from overfishing and sustain the fishing industry long-term. For example, a community-led organization in Scotland campaigned to create the country’s first “No Take Zone” marine reserve, and a nonprofit in Hawaii is restoring fishponds to revive traditional Hawaiian aquaculture.

A family of former fishers created the Kino Bay Turtle Group to monitor sea turtles in Mexico’s La Cruz Lagoon. The conservationists work to rescue and tag turtles entangled in fishing gear, track the population, and educate the public about their importance.

A fishing cooperative at the San Ignacio Lagoon protects gray whales that use the lagoon as a nursery by not fishing at that time of the year. Instead, their income comes from ecotourism which brings people close to the whales during that season.

Restaurants in the Cayman Islands are hosting lion-fish catching tournaments and then cooking and serving the invasive species to reduce their population.

Mangroves can store up six times more carbon than an area equal to the Amazon rainforest. However, they are rapidly declining, over the past century their population has been reduced by 30 to 50 percent. One nonprofit, Blue Ventures, is working with local communities to regenerate fisheries, which helps the mangroves. They're also helping local communities to manage their mangroves.

In Sri Lanka, instead of letting old buses corrode in a junkyard they are being sunk in the ocean to serve as fish-breeding sites. Over 60 buses have been dumped in the ocean across three different sites. Scientists looked at factors like depth and wave patters to determine where to sink the buses.