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| Testing equipment before diving |
Since 2003, the Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development - MCD (Member of VACNE ) have been working with community members of Van Hung to restrict fishing activities within Trao Reef to give depleted fish stocks a chance to recover. Local community members have been organised to guard the 40 ha protected area from fishing, and extensive awareness-raising campaigns detailing the benefits of a marine reserve have been carried out to raise the profile of Trao Reef within the community.
At sunrise each morning, local fishermen transported the scientists out to one or four survey sites where, on SCUBA, they assessed coral reef health, and fish and invertebrate abundance and diversity. Two sites were selected from inside and outside Trao Reef, to clearly demonstrate whether the marine reserve was having a positive effect on coral reef health.
Results showed that although Trao Reef did contain the healthiest and most diverse coral in the region, there were few signs that commercial fish and invertebrate numbers were increasing as a result of the marine reserve. Popular commercial species such as the humphead wrasse and barramundi cod, sea cucumber, lobster and giant clam, were absent from surveys signalling that overfishing had driven these species to local extinction. Encouragingly, juvenile snapper were observed in high numbers at one site in Trao Reef suggesting that snapper numbers within the marine reserve may improve with time.
Compared with ReefCheck results obtained by scientists from the Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography since 2001, coral bleaching had increased, and the area of healthy hard coral within the marine reserve was slowly decreasing. Pollution from high-density lobster farming occurring within close proximity to the marine reserve is the most likely explanation for this.
Some species seemed to be immune to the pollution in the area. Faster growing soft coral species were more abundant both inside and outside the MPA, and species generally preyed upon by commercial fish were thriving in their absence, with dramatic increases observed in the number of damelfish and butterfly fish.
With time and effective management, commercial fish populations may reappear within Trao Reef. However, the small size of the marine reserve, and the high levels of pollution the area is exposed to, may limit the extent of population recovery.