In Melanesia, Indigenous Women Take on Coral Conservation

A grassroots, all-women team uses science and dive mentorship to advocate for reef protection in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

ONE MORNING IN 2012, while leading group of ecotourists through the trackless jungle of Fergusson Island, Papua New Guinea, Australian coral reef ecologist Andy Lewis ran into a local teenager named Lorie Pipiga. Pipiga and Lewis exchanged greetings, and the ecologist explained his group’s frustrating search for an endemic bird-of-paradise. “I’m a landowner here,” Pipiga replied. “And this is my matrilineal great, great, great, great grandmother’s land. I’ll take you in and show you where the bird is.’”

As they walked on, the two continued talking. At one point, Lewis asked Pipiga about her future plans. “She looked at me with this fire in her eyes,” he recalls. “She said, ‘I want to study biology, so that I can stop people like loggers from coming in and destroying the natural resources of my homeland and destroying the reef.’ I just high-fived her and said, ‘You know what, I’m going to help you do that.’”

Lewis, who is the executive director of the Coral Sea Foundation (CSF), an organization that works with traditional landowners to develop marine reserves that enhance fisheries and protect biodiversity in the Coral Sea and Eastern Coral Triangle, sent Lorie marine biology textbooks throughout her schooling. He then taught her to scuba dive as well as survey marine biodiversity. “I want you to go back and survey your reefs, talk to the landowners, and explain to them why we need marine reserves here,” he told Lorie. “She did that in the local language, and we got ten different land-owning groups all committing reefs to this new marine reserve network. It was at that point that I realized empowering these women from these areas that can speak the language was going to be really important.”

By 2017, Pipiga earned her Dive Master certification. “In 2018 we started training the next group of women,” Lewis says, “and slowly things snowballed from there,” leading to the creation of Sea Women of Melanesia (SWoM) — a grassroots nonprofit program aimed at empowering Indigenous women through science and dive mentorship, thereby enabling them to study, protect, and advocate for the reefs they depend on along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The women are trained to conduct reef surveys in the field, consult their communities about the benefits of reef preservation, and create practicable plans for Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA); in turn, they become the primary drivers of conservation in the waters surrounding their home islands.

Lewis, who took guests on educational ecotourism adventures throughout Melanesia for nearly 11 years, has learned many of the local languages. Being able to communicate with Indigenous communities and learn from them about local marine systems, he says, has given him “incredible insight into the reefs in the area.”

“Most of the places we were going, no marine biologist had ever been before,” Lewis notes, “and I realized that they were still in quite good condition.” Smiling fondly, he recounts the astounding biodiversity of the region. Swimming at the water’s surface, one can look down at dynamic reefs and up into overhanging rainforests, where butterflies flutter and epiphytic ferns undulate in the tropical sea-breeze.

“But virtually no concrete marine conservation action was happening,” he says. “Continually, I was hearing the same story, which is [that] the fish catches are going down, which wasn’t surprising given that the population of Papua New Guinea is still expanding really rapidly.”

Reefs are exceptionally complex, interwoven ecosystems, and are presently entangled in a thick web of threats. As tropical sea temperatures rise in many areas, corals expel their symbiotic algal partners, called zooxanthellae, which leads to coral starvation, bleaching and eventually death. Ocean acidification inhibits the ability of organisms to form calcium carbonate, which corals use to build their skeletons. Massive storm surges, spurred by worsening climate change, rip reefs to shreds. Overfishing creates ecosystem imbalance, while land-based nutrient runoff causes algal blooms that smother coral communities. Add to all this the fact that only a fraction of the reefs off Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are currently protected, and the future might seem rather bleak.

But now SWoM has begun to change the tide of reef preservation in the region.

THREE CORE SWoM TEAMS now operate out of Port Moresby, Kimbe, and Alotau, PNG. They are led by Naomi Longa, a Papua New Guinean woman and SWoM’s current director and coordinator. In each locale, two women mentor other local women from the area to take part in the program. Today, SWoM has around 30 devoted and talented participants.

In order to create marine reserves, the women first speak to their communities about the benefits of doing so, which include the safeguarding of cultural heritage sites and the potential spillover of rebounding fish populations into unprotected waters where harvesters can fish unrestricted. If a community decides they want to establish a reserve, the next step is deciding what the geographic extent of protection should be. This is where the women’s undersea training comes in. Through SCUBA and free diving, they survey the sea, taking geo-tagged photographs which they and the CSF team use to help piece together areas of reef that will comprise a reserve. Then, in consultation with local landowners and clan leaders, they come up with a management plan based on the biodiversity of the area and the needs of the people who will oversee it. Once the rules of the reserve are specified, the plan gets submitted to the government for registration.

“There’s very little institutional capacity at a government level in PNG or the Solomon Islands to be driving marine reserve creation and monitoring,” Lewis notes. “In Australia, we have federal government bodies which look after all that stuff. In PNG, they just don’t have the capability. So, we need to start at the grassroots, with the landowners that are living out there looking after these reefs and watching them every single day.”

To save the reef systems in the Coral Triangle, at least 30 percent of them need to be protected, the reefs need to be protected, Lewis says, and so far “the total amount of protected reef is probably less than 1 percent.” But it’s a start.

Every reserve is unique, because each has been created in response to the rules and needs of particular communities. There isn’t a fully-operational SWoM-shepherded reserve at the moment. “They’re all at different stages of development,” says Lewis. “Right now, some marine reserve management plans are very close to being ready for submission. Others, we’re just at the first stage of people getting in touch with us and saying, ‘Hey, can you just at least come and have a look at our reef? Tell us what’s down there and tell us how we might move forward through this next step?’”

Navigating cultural tensions between Indigenous groups and White communities is of great importance to Lewis. When asked what advice he would have for other organizations looking to empower Indigenous communities and traditional owners, he emphasizes the diversity of Melanesia, which encompasses hundreds of islands where over 800 languages are spoken.

“Before you do any sort of marine conservation, the most important thing you need to understand is the cultural background of the area that you’re in,” he says. “You have to have stable leadership on the ground. Secondly, the local people have to be willing to participate. Thirdly, you need a good team of women in the community to help drive conservation forward. And lastly, don’t go too quickly and don’t tell the local people what to do. It’s their reef. They’re the owners. They’re fiercely proud of their independence. You have to come in and work with them, not come in there as a foreign outsider telling them what to do.”

Like many others who have spent decades in and around coral reefs, Lewis has developed a deep passion for the ocean and its inhabitants, as well as a sense of urgency regarding its conservation at this strange and unprecedented time. He has worked hard to provide continued support for SWoM in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite not being able to assist with operations in the field.

“The women…are very resilient,” he says. “And so, they just keep on going, finding their way around these problems, moving forward as best they can. I’m super proud of the work that they’re doing for exactly that reason.”

In fact, the dive team has already been able to aid conservation work during the pandemic. Last year, at a time when all scientific research work in the region was shut down, they were able to collect critical data about a significant coral-bleaching event off the coast of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

“In my community, I’m pretty sure that they would be happy to have the reserve,” SWoM director Naomi Longa told ABC Australia in a recent interview. She says the reef survey trainings give the women the courage to talk about the need to save the resources their communities depend on for their daily lives. “When I go out and dive and see the coral reefs, I hope we will have interest from other communities as well. We can help them get the benefits that the reserves are going to provide.”