Rebuilding Cambodia's Coastal Seas

Founded in 2008 by British conservationist Paul Ferber on Koh Ach Seh, Marine Conservation Cambodia combines marine science, community leadership and fisheries policy work along Cambodia's southern coast. It helped establish the 11,354-hectare Kep Archipelago Marine Fisheries Management Area, Cambodia's second such zone, officially approved in April 2018, and works with government partners to deploy Fishery Productivity Structures -- concrete anti-trawling reef modules that block illegal bottom-trawling while regrowing fish and seagrass habitat, which had reached 1,470 units nationwide by June 2026 in cooperation with Cambodia's Sustainable Coastal and Marine Fisheries Project. Its Cambodian Marine Mammal Conservation Project has individually identified an estimated 40-46 Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in neighbouring Kampot province and recorded Cambodia's first drone footage of a dugong, while local fishers report rising catches and returning seahorses, turtles and dolphins as seagrass meadows recover.