The National Geographic Society has announced the winners of its Marine Protection Prize...

Three winners were chosen from a pool of 156 teams, and each will be awarded $150,000 to implement their plans:

Marine Conservation Cambodia, led by Paul Ferber, created a project which counters destructive and illegal fishing practices in Kep province, Cambodia, by deploying anti-trawling structures and delimiting boundaries of a marine fisheries management area. They developed a simple, interlocking design and high strength construction techniques that can deliver effective, robust and affordable devices on an industrial scale or at the village level.

A full structure is made of 21 concrete blocks (each 1.25-meter long and weighing 150-kilograms), built separately and assembled underwater. The structures can be built to different heights at various depths, thus avoiding impacts on regular and legal navigation, while enabling restoration of small-scale fisheries. They are designed to be easily movable without heavy machines and aim to provide a strong deterrent to illegal trawling as bottom-dragged nets get caught on them

Full https://www.maritime-executive.com/arti ... gs.aza8Joo

More here on the organization Marine Conservation Cambodia and the founder, Paul Felber. He seems to be a hands-on type of guy.
post210194.html?hilit=marine%20conserva ... er#p210194

Looks like they copied that from the plans of a Chinese hi-rise in Chinaville

A good idea for once.

The Marine Conservation Cambodia NGO operates off the coast from Kep, Cambodia. What they are doing:

The Kep Archipelago MFMA (Marine Fisheries Management Area): From the Marine Conservation Cambodia website:https://marineconservationcambodia.org/ ... on-the-way

The MFMA is on the way !
Created: 17 February 2018
Last Updated: 23 April 2018
In January, the 2nd MFMA of Cambodia was provincially signed, allowing us to start deploying our conservation and anti-trawling structures, and start the on-the-ground implementation.An MFMA, Marine Fisheries Management Area, is the Cambodian equivalent of a Marine protected area.

For those who don't know, let us introduce you to it.

The Kep Archipelago MFMA is an 11 354 ha protected area. It will offer 4 differently managed zones, designed to protect highly sensitive seagrass meadows and coral reefs from further destruction while preserving the livelihoods of local fishing communities, all of which are suffering due to illegal and destructive fishing activities.

Conservation Area (112ha): Defined as potential area for aquatic animals and aquatic plants to shelter, to spawn, feed, and grow. Fisheries Conservation Areas are strictly prohibiting any activity that has a negative effect on fishery resources, except for permitted scientific research purposes from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Fisheries Refugia (420ha): Defined as specific area for one or more aquatic species in the period of critical life cycle. Fishing and other activities inside fisheries refugias are strictly prohibited during the protected period; however the family fishing activities and other activities, which are not harmful to fisheries resources, are allowed as usual, after the Protected Period. Protected periods will vary in timeframe, and are catered to each Fisheries Refugia in order to reflect the species biology and habitat unique to that area.
Fisheries Protected Area (10040ha): Defined near or close to fisheries conservation area, in order to secure the sustainability of the fisheries resources. Fisheries Protected Areas can be used for ecotourism activities, family scale fishing or recreational fishing that will not harm coral reef or biological resources.
Recreational and Research Area (405ha): Defined as an area exclusive to recreational activities and protection of biodiversity resources, ensuring benefit from sustainabe tourism. This area is allowed for recreational diving, snorkeling, and for collecting scientific information and monitoring resources change/trend. All kind of fishing activities are banned inside this area.

mfma map

To improve the MFMA efficiency, MCC developed the Conservation and anti-trawling structures (CANTS), with four primary functions: (i) prevent illegal and destructive trawling; (ii) improve water quality in the entire Kep Archipelago; (iii) delimit the boundaries of the five different zones of the MFMA; (iv) act as a marine life aggregation device, or artificial reef.

CANTS

Thanks to a modular design, the CANTS can be built to different heights at various depths, thus avoiding impacts on regular and legal navigation, while having the potential to enhance and reinvent small-scale fisheries. This system (exclusive to MCC and Cambodia) will provide practical solutions to the inter-linked problems (often tackled in isolation) of poor water quality, collapsing local fisheries, increasingly impoverished communities, lack of marine areas under effective conservation management, and climate change.

MCC will have to deploy 47 of these structures, which represents 983 concrete blocks! Our team will progressively build it, stock it, and wait for the good conditions to deploy it underwater.

Feature article, THE FEARLESS ECO-VIGILANTE OF CAMBODIA’S TROUBLED WATERS, from 2016 for those who missed it:
http://narrative.ly/the-fearless-eco-vi ... ed-waters/
Photo Charlotte Pert

CEO thread on the article, also from 2016:
post111607.html?hilit=Paul%20Ferber#p111607