When I was growing up, our relatives
and our parents, they usually go out to the sea to get our food.
So it is very important for our community.
My name is Naomi Longa.
I am the team leader of the Sea Women of Melanesia program
here in Kimbe, New Britain province of Papua New Guinea.
So my love for the ocean started when I was still a kid.
So most of the days I used to spend my time
in the sea swimming, looking at the corals, the fish
and I always wonder how they grow,.
If they are living thing, then how they get
their food from and why are they so beautiful in the water?
I took up science from there just to just to
know more about the sea.
The Sea Women of Melanesia started in 2016 by Dr Andy Lewis.
We empower these women by training them with basic reef survey techniques
so that they can be able to find an ideal area
for a marine reserve in their community.
. As I was traveling around Papua New Guinea,
over more than a decade in my work as an eco tourism guide,
it was more often than not the young
women in the villages
which were coming up to me and talking to me about marine life
and about marine conservation and what they could do to look after
their own reefs.
I looked at it and said,
OK, what skills that I have can I bring to bear to try
and make a difference here for the people and for the reefs
and for this really quite important part of the world, which really
has the last great tract of high biodiversity reef in the world now.
It's far too precious to lose.
First of all, we usually do the snorkeling training,
and then once I see that the women are confident
in the water, then we go on and do the survey technique.
After I train them, I can see a very big difference.
They can they can all swim confidently in the water
and they can I.D. the fish.
They can identify the corals.
Once they finish the training, they're going to go back
to their own community and they're going to do the survey
in their own reefs. And they're going to talk
to the village elders about what they learn.
It now gives them the confidence
to make decisions in their family, in their community,
and also it gives them the courage to talk about, you know,
the resources that we depend on in our daily lives, like coral reefs
The coral triangle is being affected by climate change,
there's no doubt we have seen thermal bleaching
through that area. But the bleaching we saw there in January
2021 was probably the most extensive,
and the communities were just wondering what
was happening on their coral reefs.
But I knew that the corals were bleaching because they all turn white
And of course, at that time there was very few recreational
or scientific or expedition vessels in the area.
When that event started, there was a lockdown in all the provinces.
Here in in our own area, we have access to the sea.
We can easily go out.
And so our Sea Women of Melanesia teams were on the ground.
We had them kitted out with underwater cameras.
And so we were able to deploy them
to a range of different locations through the eastern coral triangle.
I've never seen bleaching even before. The team in Milne Bay
Province, and in Port Moresby and in Solomon Islands
they also went out
and do the survey, and they have noticed the bleaching.
They were able to get really high quality imagery
of the condition of the reefs, which then they sent back to us. And
we were able to make an assessment of the severity of that bleaching.
It was very important because it was probably
some of the only information, scientific information
that we had coming out of those areas.
There was around about 50 percent to 60 percent of the corals
on the reef were showing signs of bleaching stress.
Looking at the imagery, probably about 10 percent of them
may have gone on to die. After the bleaching
I went back and surveyed the reefs and I saw that
most of the corals, they survive the bleaching.
So I was always really happy about that.
Climate change is a significant issue,
but in Melanesia by far, the biggest issue is over-fishing,
both by local people and by commercial elements,
both within these countries and foreign fleets that are coming in.
To create a reserve in my community, the next step is to talk
to the communities about the benefits of marine reserves.
And we will have to hear from their perspective what they think.
If they want to have a marine reserve, then
we're going to tell them that, hey, we have the skills, we have cameras
and we have GPS, that we can do all the necessary
things that we need to do to set up the reserve.
So in my community, I'm pretty sure
that they would be happy to have that reserve.
When I go out and dive and see the coral reefs,
I hope that we'll have more interest from communities as well.
We can help them to get the benefits that the reserves
are going to provide.