The ocean is facing environmental catastrophe
You know really we are facing a planetary emergency
These ecosystems are disappearing
Overfishing is a ticking time bomb for both planet...
...and people
Hundreds of millions of people depend on tropical, small-scale fisheries...
...for their survival and these fisheries are collapsing
In one remote coastal village...
...the locals appear to have found an unlikely solution
A strange little sea creature...
...that’s a popular aphrodisiac
And just possibly a fisherman’s salvation
In the first business of its kind in Madagascar...
...Dadiny has recently started farming these animals...
...sea cucumbers
Sea cucumbers are under threat
Growing them in designated and contained areas...
...is helping to protect both this important species...
...and other kinds of marine life here in the south-west of Madagascar
Because of the part sea cucumbers play in cleaning up the seabed...
...it’s believed that they help maintain stocks of other marine life
They’re not the most charismatic of animals...
...but they play an enormously important role...
...in eating the sediment, the detritus, the organic material...
...that surrounds every single grain of sand and the algae...
...that will grow around those grains
In this region, not just sea cucumbers...
...but all kinds of marine life have suffered...
...from chronic overfishing
When marine conservationist Alasdair Harris...
...first visited Madagascar in 2001...
...he was shocked to discover the extent of this devastation
We found some anthropological research from the Eighties...
...that shows that back then fishermen and women...
...would be able to fill the body of an entire canoe...
...in just a few hours
Today that would be unimaginable
We saw ecosystems that had degraded...
...to the point where they were totally unrecognisable
Largely because of overfishing
To reduce this overfishing...
...the NGO that Alasdair runs helped train...
...700 local fishermen and women in small-scale...
...sustainable sea-cucumber farming
It’s meant many locals are no longer using...
...the techniques that contributed to overfishing in this region
Alasdair’s research...
...suggests fish stocks have doubled here since 2006
But it is not marine conservation that has...
...fundamentally persuaded the local population...
...to buy in to aquaculture
It’s hard economics
Ultimately to help the marine environment...
...we have to help the communities...
...and the people that depend on it
There’s a strong demand for sea cucumbers in Asia...
...where they’re prized as an aphrodisiac
Farmers here can now make up to $50 a month...
...about twice that of a regular fisherman
While this is still substantially below the average global wage...
...it’s brought dramatic improvements in the local quality of life
NGOs, including Alasdair’s, are now working on similar farming ventures...
...in other coastal villages around Madagascar
Localised efforts can only go so far in countering the vast damage...
...to ecosystems across the ocean
But in the face of an increasingly urgent crisis...
...that could still be a very long way
We’ve seen how viral scaling...
...of community-based marine-conservation initiatives can work...
...and we are not doing enough to amplify...
...community initiatives like these
Hundreds of millions of people depend on...
...tropical, so-called small-scale fisheries, for their survival...
...and these fisheries are collapsing...
...across the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Atlantic
We urgently need replicable solutions...
...that can help address the challenges that these communities face