Excerpt:
In a remote corner of Cambodia, the team at Marine Conservation Cambodia has been fighting trawl-fishing for over a decade. On their tiny island in the Kep Archipelago seagrass meadows once sprawled the seabed. Now, much of that ecosystem lies in ruin….
It took Sir David Attenborough just one documentary to ignite a long-overdue conversation.
When Ocean aired this June, millions of viewers finally witnessed what scientists, coastal communities, and conservationists have known for decades: bottom trawling is one of the most destructive fishing practices on Earth. For years, it slipped beneath the radar of public awareness, conveniently out of sight and out of mind. But now the conversation is shifting. Finally, the world is paying attention.
In a remote corner of Cambodia, the team at Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC) has been fighting this battle for over a decade, long before it became headline news. Their base is Koh Ach Seh, a tiny island in the Kep Archipelago near the Vietnamese border. Here, seagrass meadows once sprawled across the seabed, offering sanctuary for juvenile fish, blue swimming crabs, and endangered species like dugongs and seahorses. Now, much of that ecosystem lies in ruin.
Illegal trawlers, mostly foreign vessels, cross into Cambodian waters under cover of night. Engines rumble through the darkness, dragging steel-weighted nets that scrape entire patches of seagrass from the seabed. By morning, the ocean floor is scarred.
“Witnessing the effects of trawling was a turning point in my career,” says Sopheanie Phion, a Marine Mammal Researcher at MCC and the first Cambodian woman in her field. “I remember when the team returned from one of their night patrols – part of our ongoing efforts to monitor Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing – carrying a confiscated trawl net.
“Inside were coral, crabs, juvenile fish, seahorses, and seagrass. All bycatch. None of it the intended catch. That moment changed everything for me. I knew I had to be part of protecting our ocean. That was nearly four years ago, and I’ve been with MCC ever since.”
Her story is one of many, but it’s these firsthand experiences that bring to life what is so often reduced to statistics…
