Blue Ventures develops transformative approaches for catalysing and sustaining locally led marine conservation. They work in places where the ocean is vital to local cultures and economies, and are committed to protecting marine biodiversity in ways that benefit coastal people.

Their story started over a decade ago, surveying coral reefs in the Mozambique channel. Vezo communities in southern Madagascar were concerned about the decline of their fisheries, so they supported one village to experiment with closing off a small section of their octopus gleaning area for a few months, to see whether this might boost productivity.

When the closure was re-opened, communities experienced a huge increase in octopus landings and fisher incomes. As news of this remarkable fishery boom spread, neighbouring communities started copying this approach. Crucially, this sparked interest in more ambitious coastal management efforts, leading to the creation of the country’s first Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) governed by a small network of fishing villages.

Since then, this temporary fishery closure model has gone viral along thousands of kilometres of Madagascar’s coastline, spawning a grassroots marine conservation revolution with 64 more LMMAs established to date. Today, 11% of the island’s seabed is managed by communities, for communities.

Their work is about much more than octopus. These experiences have guided their journey searching for new approaches to demonstrate that marine conservation can be in everyone’s interest, and that taking less from their ocean can give them much much more.