![\"Long,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250914_GHC_Ambolimailake_104743.webp\")
<\/p>\n\t<\/p>\n
Fishermen return from a morning working at sea in Ambolimailaky, a fishing village in the Bay of Ranobe.Garth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0Vox<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n \u00a0The coral reef itself was exquisite. Growing about 3 miles offshore in 50 feet of water, it was a rugged terrain of pinks, blues, and oranges, set against a backdrop of deep blue. The coral pieces, each a colony of living animals, took on a range of unusual forms, from cake platters and pencil shavings to antlers and brains.<\/p>\n But there was one obvious thing missing: fish. Like a city without people, the reef was mostly empty\u2014not only of fish, but also of crabs, eels, and other typical marine life on a coral reef.<\/p>\n It was a sunny morning in September, and I was diving on a coral reef in southwest Madagascar, an island nation that sits east of continental Africa. And like many reefs in the region and\u00a0across much of the world<\/a>, it\u2019s on the verge of collapse. <\/p>\n Overfishing has emptied the ocean here of fish, which over time will allow algae to take over and outcompete the corals. The increasing intensity of marine heat waves and cyclones, along with inland deforestation, also threatens the country\u2019s reefs, which are among the most biologically diverse in the world.<\/p>\n This is a major problem for people along the coast of southwest Madagascar. Their livelihood depends on fishing\u2014catching marine critters is an essential, and often the only, source of food and income\u2014yet as the reef collapses, so does the fishery. The reef is where fish sleep, eat, and hide from predators, and without it, they struggle to survive. It\u2019s a complicated situation: The health and well-being of people along the coast depends on fishing, yet too much fishing is a key reason why the reef, and the fishery it supports, is in decline.<\/p>\n This tension between human and wildlife survival is not unique to the coasts of southwest Madagascar. The island, home to about\u00a033 million<\/a>\u00a0people, is among the poorest of poor nations, with\u00a0some 80 percent of its population<\/a>\u00a0living on less than the equivalent of $2.15 a day. People often have no choice but to depend directly on ecosystems to meet their basic needs.<\/p>\n The government, meanwhile, has failed to provide even the most basic services like\u00a0reliable electricity<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0water<\/a>, let alone a pathway out of poverty and dependency on exploitation. That failure fueled\u00a0weeks of youth-led protests<\/a>\u00a0this fall in Madagascar, where the\u00a0median age is around 20<\/a>. In response, Parliament\u00a0impeached<\/a>\u00a0the president on October 14 and the\u00a0military seized control<\/a>\u00a0of the government. What that power shift means for Madagascar, and for a generation demanding change, remains unclear.<\/p>\n Under the sheer weight of human need, it\u2019s no surprise, then, that many of the country\u2019s iconic ecosystems are failing, too. Research\u00a0suggests<\/a>\u00a0that since the turn of the century the country has lost as much as half of its live coral cover, and a similar extent of native forest. Nearly every species of lemur, a type of animal that you can only find in Madagascar, is now\u00a0threatened with extinction<\/a>.<\/p>\n The government and nonprofit groups have spent decades\u2014and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid\u2014trying to address these challenges, often relying on traditional environmental approaches, like setting up reserves that restrict fishing. But what Madagascar shows is that conservation projects don\u2019t usually work when they make it harder for desperately poor people to make a living. That may seem obvious, but it\u2019s one reason why many environmental projects have failed in the world\u2019s biodiversity hotspots, which are commonly found in poor nations.<\/p>\n Places like Madagascar underscore the need for a different conservation approach\u2014one that truly centers people, and what they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives. That\u2019s what ultimately brought me to the Bay of Ranobe, where I spent a week in September. Guided by fishers and a team of international researchers, a small organization is trying to restore the fishery and the food it provides, without actually restricting fishing. The goal of the project is to help people. Conservation is just a byproduct.<\/p>\n The ocean was calm and flecked with sails when I arrived one morning at the beach in Ambolimailaky, a fishing village in the Bay of Ranobe. The sails\u2014often made of discarded rice bags stitched together\u2014propelled fishermen to shore in wooden canoes known as pirogues.<\/p>\n As the fishermen neared the beach, I saw jumbles of mosquito nets in some of their boats. In Madagascar and elsewhere in Africa, it\u2019s not uncommon for fishermen to repurpose mosquito nets\u2014which are often donated by aid organizations to\u00a0protect against malaria<\/a>\u2014to catch fish.<\/p>\n The fishermen showed me what they caught. Some of them had buckets of small anchovies that moved like liquid silver. Others had a bin filled up halfway with reef fish like triggerfish, lionfish, parrotfish, and baby barracudas. A group of young kids put a few that were still alive, including a clownfish, into a metal bowl to play with. A pair of school-age boys showed me a plastic bucket with a dozen juvenile octopuses they caught. The tentacles were tangled together and partially submerged in ink.<\/p>\n As someone from the US who doesn\u2019t fish, I felt unsettled in the face of so many dead and dying creatures. I normally encounter reef fish and octopuses in aquariums, on snorkel trips, or in the marketing materials for conservation groups. But fishermen here have a different relationship with them\u2014and for a very good reason.<\/p>\n In the Bay of Ranobe, fishing is the primary source of income and a vital source of nutrition in coastal villages, according to Aroniaina \u201cAro\u201d Manampitahiana Falinirina, a doctoral researcher who studies fisheries at the University of Toliara\u2019s marine research institute, IHSM. It\u2019s how people pay for food, school supplies, and transportation. And among certain communities\u2014namely, the Vezo, an ethnic group with deep ancestral ties to the sea\u2014fishing has been a way of life for generations.<\/p>\n Speaking through an interpreter, Nambokely, one of the fishermen I met on the beach, told me that if he doesn\u2019t fish, he doesn\u2019t eat. Fishermen in the Bay of Ranobe work around the clock to support their families.<\/p>\n One evening, just after the sun had slipped below the horizon, I boated out on the water with a few researchers who study coral reefs and fisheries. The ocean\u2019s surface was full of bioluminescent microorganisms that lit up as the bow of our skiff cut through the waves. It was as if we were riding on fairy dust.<\/p>\n But the main light show was underwater. Once we were farther offshore, beams of light appeared below the waves, moving erratically in all directions\u2014night fishermen. The fishermen spot their prey using waterproof torches, sometimes made by wrapping ordinary flashlights in a few condoms.<\/p>\n After surfacing with an eel on his spear, one fisherman, a Vezo man named Jean Batiste, told me he fishes at night because he can catch more compared to during the day.<\/p>\n Yet as Batiste said\u2014and as every fisher I spoke to in the Bay of Ranobe repeated\u2014it\u2019s becoming harder and harder to catch anything, and thus harder and harder to earn a living. \u201cI\u2019m worried,\u201d Batiste told me that night on the water.<\/p>\n The fishery in the Bay of Ranobe, and across much of southwest Madagascar, is in decline, and perhaps even collapsing. A number of\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0from the region show that fishermen are catching fewer fish, and fewer fish species, compared to three or four decades ago. Some species\u2014including certain kinds of parrotfish, which can help limit the growth of coral-harming algae\u2014have\u00a0disappeared<\/a>\u00a0altogether from some areas. \u201cIt\u2019s decreasing at a rate that has never been seen before,\u201d said Gildas Todinanahary, a marine researcher and the director of IHSM.<\/p>\n The fish people\u00a0are\u00a0catching are also\u00a0smaller<\/a>, indicating that fishermen may be netting more juveniles\u2014a clear sign of overfishing. If the adults and the juveniles are fished out, there\u2019s nothing left to spawn the next generation.<\/p>\n A single fisherman was once able to earn, on a good day, around $10 or $15 in one outing, Nambokely told me. But today, groups of four or five fishermen will spend several hours on the water and might only catch enough to fill half a plastic wash basin with fish. That\u2019s worth about $5 to $10, they told me, which they then have to split among themselves. A dozen small octopuses, meanwhile, are worth only around $2.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople can\u2019t get enough food in one day,\u201d said Marcel Sebastian, an elderly fisherman I met in the village. He\u2019s been fishing in southwest Madagascar for more than 50 years. \u201cThey used to have lunch and dinner. But now they only have dinner due to the scarcity of fish.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t fishing. It\u2019s overfishing\u2014the forces that ramp up fishing to such an extreme that the reef and the life it supports have no time to recover. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening now in southwest Madagascar. There are simply too many people fishing for the same fish.<\/p>\n One reason for that is climate change. Rising temperatures are contributing to prolonged droughts that make it harder to\u00a0grow crops in southern Madagascar<\/a>. Meanwhile, widespread deforestation\u2014which removes trees that stabilize the soil and help water seep underground\u2014means that when it does rain, flooding can bury farmland under sediment. Faced with failing crops inland, farmers in southern Madagascar are increasingly migrating to the coasts in search of income from fishing instead. (Inland deforestation is also sending dirt into the ocean, which can smother coral reefs.)<\/p>\n This climate-driven migration is causing the coastal population to swell, putting pressure on the fishery. It\u2019s hard to find reliable population estimates for the Bay of Ranobe, but\u00a0a dissertation from 2019<\/a>\u00a0estimated that villages here were growing at an average rate of about 4.5 percent per year, meaning the local population would roughly double in 15 years. The global average population growth rate is around\u00a01 percent<\/a>. \u201cA lot of the time, people who are coming from inland don\u2019t want to be here,\u201d said Quinn Mitsuko Parker, a doctoral researcher at Stanford who studies fishing communities in the Bay of Ranobe. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to be fishing. They\u2019d rather be farming.\u201d<\/p>\n But people have no choice but to fish. Even though it\u2019s no longer providing enough. Even though it\u2019s hastening the decline of the reef and the source of income it provides.<\/p>\n One morning, around the new moon, I went out on the water with a few fishermen at low tide. The water got deeper at first, but as we motored farther out, it became shallow again\u2014until it was so shallow we could walk. We were on top of the barrier reef. It was a bizarre image: Here we were, in what felt like the middle of the ocean, standing in just a few inches of water.<\/p>\n During especially low tides, part of the reef here is exposed, and fishers\u2014in this case, mainly women\u2014take advantage of these conditions. They search the reef by foot for octopuses, urchins, and other critters to eat or sell, an approach known as gleaning.<\/p>\n At least a dozen women were gleaning when we arrived, their eyes fixed downward as they paced around. Some of them wielded spears, to stab octopuses, or large conch-like snail shells, which they use to crack open urchins.<\/p>\n I approached a woman named Doseline, who wore mismatched sneakers and a wide-brimmed hat. As we talked, she poked a spear under rocks in search of octopuses, occasionally pausing to grab a snail and put it in her bag.<\/p>\n Doseline told me she\u2019s catching half as many octopuses as she did 10 or 20 years ago. And while she knows gleaning can damage the coral\u2014most of the exposed reef is already dead, in part because fishers sometimes crush corals under their feet or break them to grab hiding octopuses\u2014she doesn\u2019t have a choice, she said. Doseline is the sole provider for her son, who\u2019s in school, she said. \u201cMy income [from fishing] is not enough,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n For more than an hour, I watched Doseline search the reef. We stepped over spiny red sea stars and a colorful slug called a nudibranch. I found discarded shells occupied by crabs that looked like creatures from another world. Doseline, who wore her hair in pigtails, didn\u2019t have much luck. \u201cI\u2019m sad because I didn\u2019t catch any octopuses, so I\u2019ll go back home,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Over the last three decades, Madagascar has attracted an enormous amount of attention from international environmental groups and foreign donors. The island\u2019s wildlife is not only charismatic\u2014lemurs! chameleons! coral reefs!\u2014but also unique. Because Madagascar has been isolated from other land masses for millions of years, animals there have had plenty of time to evolve into new species. Today, around 90 percent of the country\u2019s plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. That means if you lose them in Madagascar, you lose them everywhere.<\/p>\n With so much to lose, major international environmental groups ranging from\u00a0Conservation International<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0WWF<\/a>\u00a0have been working for years on the island to try to curb forest loss, overfishing, and other kinds of environmental harm. And aid organizations have funneled\u00a0hundreds of millions<\/a>\u00a0of dollars into Madagascar to help. Yet those threats are still getting worse,\u00a0not better<\/a>. Historically, environmental groups, foreign scientists, and the government in Madagascar bet big on protected areas as a means to safeguard nature, such as parks, marine protected areas, and nature reserves. The Bay of Ranobe is, for example, technically part of an official marine protected area. But as\u00a0research shows<\/a>, those protection schemes have done little to stop environmental harm.<\/p>\n \u201cThe conservation of our biodiversity through Madagascar protected areas\u2019 system for 30 years was a failure,\u201d Madagascar\u2019s former environmental minister, Baomiavotse Vahinala Raharinirina,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in 2020.<\/p>\n According to several environmental and development researchers I spoke to, that\u2019s because parks often don\u2019t address the reasons why people exploit nature in the first place. In some cases, they also disproportionately burden women fishers by restricting access to areas for gleaning, as Merrill Baker-M\u00e9dard wrote in her book,\u00a0Feminist Conservation: Politics and Power in Madagascar\u2019s Marine Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another challenge is that NGOs in Madagascar, and to an extent worldwide, are often more accountable to their donors than they are to the local community, according to Emma Gibbons, who runs Reef Doctor, a small nonprofit in the Bay of Ranobe. Donors tend to fund short-term projects and they face few consequences if projects don\u2019t actually help people or ecosystems, Gibbons said. These issues are especially pronounced in southern Madagascar,\u00a0nicknamed<\/a>\u00a0the \u201ccemetery of projects,\u201d because so many of those projects\u2014from establishing solar water pumps to\u00a0beekeeping<\/a>\u2014have failed<\/a>.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a chance of conservation working, it has to be owned or guided by the community, rooted in a deep understanding of the local culture, and aligned with what people want, said Gibbons, a British national who\u2019s lived in Madagascar for two decades. Fishermen here certainly want to safeguard the fishery\u2014it\u2019s their livelihood, their survival\u2014but they can\u2019t afford to lose their fishing grounds in the process. Food security takes priority. \u201cYou can\u2019t tell people not to eat,\u201d Gibbons said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s this perspective that\u2019s informed the approach Gibbons is taking now. Instead of attempting to limit fishing as some traditional conservation has tried to do, she\u2014along with members of the community and a team of local and foreign researchers\u2014are trying to create more places to fish.<\/p>\n And to do that, they\u2019re essentially building new coral reefs from scratch in the Bay of Ranobe. \u201cOur hope is that we can increase the area that\u2019s available to fish,\u201d Gibbons said.<\/p>\n Building artificial reefs is simpler than it sounds: She and her collaborators sink massive chunks of limestone offshore, forming long underwater rows of rocks that are each about 57 meters. That\u2019s roughly the length of a commercial airplane. They then \u201cseed\u201d those rocks with life using smaller constructions called autonomous reef monitoring structures (ARMS<\/a>) that have spent several months accumulating corals, sponges, and other marine organisms on a natural reef. Those structures, made of stacked stone plates, are basically coral reef starter packs.<\/p>\n So far, Reef Doctor has finished building two artificial reefs that cover about half an acre. Each of them has four rows of rocks, known as spurs, seeded with ARMS.<\/p>\n The sea was calm and more green than blue when I arrived by boat above one of the artificial reefs, about a mile from shore, with marine biologist Mark Little. He\u2019s studying microbes on the reef. The water was cloudy, so we could barely see the rocks below\u2014not the most inviting conditions. But we strapped on tanks and plunged in.<\/p>\n As I sank down, the rows of rocks appeared dramatically through my foggy mask, as if I was descending on ruins of a lost city.<\/p>\n I swam up to a group of ARMS, from which fist-sized bits of coral sprouted like branches of a bonsai tree. Box fish, lionfish, and even young parrotfish\u2014named for their bird-like beaks\u2014crowded around them. At one point, a stingray appeared out of the murky beyond and passed right in front of me, before vanishing again. I was struck at that moment by the realization that we\u2019ve damaged our environment so badly that we literally have to rebuild ecosystems we depend on from scratch. At least in this case, that approach seems to be working.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s doing its job,\u201d said Little, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and Scripps Institute of Oceanography, when we were back in the boat. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of life.\u201d<\/p>\n Early surveys of the artificial reef have detected hundreds of animals across tens of species, including giant clams and cone snails, according to Aaron Hartmann, an ecologist at the US-based Perry Institute for Marine Science, who\u2019s closely involved in the project.<\/p>\n Over the next several years,\u00a0a team<\/a>\u00a0of local and foreign researchers will study the impact of the artificial reefs on marine life and the fishery here\u2014and how that, in turn, affects the physical and mental health of people in nearby villages. The study is among the largest in the world to\u00a0link ecosystem health to human health<\/a>, according to Chris Golden, a nutrition and global health researcher at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, who\u2019s closely involved in the project.<\/p>\n The purpose of this study is \u201cto understand whether or not stewarding natural resources in this way can simultaneously benefit the ecosystem and benefit human nutrition and food security and human health,\u201d Golden said. \u201cWe want to quantify the way that interventions like this\u2014an environmental intervention\u2014could be viewed as a public health intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t help but feel like it\u2019s just nowhere near enough. If the scale of fishing continues\u2014or increases, as the coastal population swells\u2014a few artificial reefs won\u2019t be able to rescue the fishery. Even scientists involved in the project understand the limitations. \u201cWithin the broader situation, it\u2019s not going to work,\u201d said Todinanahary, who works closely with Gibbons.<\/p>\n Truly sustaining the reef and the fishery means providing coastal communities with other sources of income, Todinanahary told me. That means investing in education so people can learn new skills, like climate-resilient farming, and building out other non-exploitative industries. The country needs enormous, systemic change for conservation to really work. That requires good governance, and right now Madagascar hardly has a government.<\/p>\n But as Todinanahary points out, NGOs and aid groups have poured millions of dollars into Madagascar for environmental projects. What if those groups had, instead, put all of that money toward education or health care? Sometimes, effective conservation doesn\u2019t look like conservation at all.<\/p>\n Ultimately, what I saw in the Bay of Ranobe was more bleak than I had imagined. At times, it felt like watching an environmental and human crisis unfold in real time. Nonetheless, people like Gibbons, Todinanahary, and a growing number of smart Malagasy scientists are still determined to restore the fishery\u2014because the stakes are just so high. When you\u2019re actually a part of these communities, you\u2019re accountable to them. That makes the consequences of doing nothing hard to stomach.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s far from futile. The reef, and the fishery it supports, could still recover. There\u2019s still life.<\/p>\n After diving on the artificial reef, Little and I boated to a natural reef nearby, called Vatosoa. Several years ago, Reef Doctor built a smaller artificial reef close to Vatosoa for people to fish on, and in exchange, local fishermen agreed to avoid this one, Gibbons told me.<\/p>\n My expectations were still low, especially after diving reefs here that had no fish. But it was spectacular. The reef was formed by a species that grows thin, curved sheets of coral in layers around each other, like petals of a rose. And there were dozens of these living structures packed in together, so it felt like we were swimming over a bouquet.<\/p>\n My mask kept fogging up, a deeply irritating problem that can ruin a dive. I flooded it with seawater and cleared it with bubbles a handful of times. When I could finally see clearly again, I noticed something floating in front of my face. It looked like a piece of seaweed, though it was attached to the unmistakable body of a cuttlefish, a cephalopod with eight arms and two tentacles.<\/p>\n Famous for its camouflage, the animal seemed to be using its arms to mimic a piece of debris. As I swam toward it, the cuttlefish reversed slowly. Moments later, perhaps after realizing it was not fooling me, it changed colors and sped off.<\/p>\n \u201cThe potential for recovery is still there,\u201d Gibbons told me one evening, as we walked the beach at sunset, careful to avoid stepping on discarded spiny shells. \u201cThere\u2019s huge biodiversity within the fishery. It\u2019s not going to be there forever, but it\u2019s still, at this moment, there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fishermen return from a morning working at sea in Ambolimailaky, a fishing village in the Bay of Ranobe.Garth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-253228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Underwater](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250915_GC_Ranobe-lagoon_103754.webp.jpeg\")
Corals on the barrier reef in the Bay of Ranobe. Overfishing has emptied the ocean of fish.
\nGarth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250915_GC_Ambolimailaka_150445.webp.jpeg\")
An aerial view of Ambolimailaky.Garth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n![\"Fishermen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250916_GC_Ambolimailaka_111050.webp.jpeg\")
Fishermen sail to shore in Ambolimailaky.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250916_GC_Ambolimailaka_120012.webp.jpeg\")
Nambokely, a farmer-turned-fisherman in Ambolimailaky, migrated to the coast roughly 20 years ago when changing weather conditions made farming untenable.Garth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250915_GHC_Ifaty_200816.webp.jpeg\")
Sitting on the edge of our boat, Jean Batiste shows us the eel he just caught.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250914_GC_Ambolimailaka_101944.webp.jpeg\")
A plastic bucket full of juvenile fish caught by beach seining, an indiscriminate fishing technique that involves dragging a net through the shallows.<\/p>\n![\"Men](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250916_GC_Ambolimailaka_093700.webp.jpeg\")
Fishermen pull a net into their pirogue.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250922_GC_Ranobe-lagoon_112354.webp.jpeg\")
Doseline searches for octopuses on the reef in the Bay of Ranobe on September 22. Around the full and new moons, part of the reef is exposed, even though it\u2019s a few miles offshore.<\/p>\n
The main problem is poverty\u2014the sheer demand put on the environment\u2014which is closely linked to political unrest. But there are also serious problems with the traditional approach to conservation in Madagascar and other developing nations.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250922_GHC_Ifaty_152621.webp.jpeg\")
Emma Gibbons, executive director of the Malagasy NGO Reef Doctor.<\/p>\n![\"Coral](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250917_GC_Ranobe-lagoon_092349.webp.jpeg\")
A young colony of branching coral growing from one of the ARMS on the artificial reef.<\/p>\n![\"Pyramid](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250917_GHC_Ranobe_092242.webp.jpeg\")
Layered, limestone structures called ARMS, shown here, are used to seed the artificial reefs with life from a natural reef.
\nGarth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250921_GHC_Sarondrano_113659.webp.jpeg\")
Gildas Todinanahary, director of the University of Toliara\u2019s marine research institute, IHSM.<\/p>\n![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250917_GC_Ranobe-lagoon_111312.webp.jpeg\")
Vatosoa has rose-like coral colonies that form an underwater bouquet.Garth Cripps\/Vox<\/p>\n