The Local Hero Award

This award recognises the individual or (grassroots / community-based / local) group that has had the most positive impact on the marine environment within their local community this year. The winner will be a recognised leader on marine conservation issues within their community. Special attention will be paid to those working in an unfavourable environment or circumstances.

Criteria: Nominees for this award must have a) initiated a promising effort for the benefit of the ocean within their community, or b) significantly improved, advanced, or revived an existing effort towards new achievements.

The finalists are:

• Pak Tono - Indonesia
• MARINElife team and volunteers – South-West Dolphin Project
• The Sea Women of Melanesia (Naomi Longa) and the Coral Sea Foundation (Andy Lewis)

Pak Tono - Indonesia

The coastal waters in West Kalimantan Province (WKP) are home to rich and threatened marine biodiversity including dugongs. Despite being protected, dugong populations are declining due to unsustainable fishing practices, water transportation and gillnet entanglement. Ten to 20 dugongs are lost to gillnet entanglement in Cempedak and Bawal island every year. Some fishers sell dugong meat at the market when they get stuck in their nets to make extra money, but Pak Tono, a local fisherman wants to protect them. Tono is a member of the fishing community on Cempedak and Bawal Islands, and an active voice for the protection of dugongs in the region. He contacted WeBe Adventure, a local ecotourism organisation, and Yayasan International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) about the issues and helps rescue and release them whenever possible. Tono is a strong local advocate for dugong conservation and has been instrumental in starting community-run patrols around main seagrass hotspots. This initiative is promoting sustainable fishing practices and will result in the implementation of a community-designed management and zonation plan to reduce entanglement rates.

Marinelife team and volunteers – South-West Dolphin Project

MARINElife, a UK marine charity, has provided vital new data on threatened or globally endangered marine predators through unfunded surveys. The surveys were completed by MARINElife’s volunteers on ecotourism vessels and via a 35 day CEFAS Peltic cruise, despite major logistical challenges caused by Covid-19. Surveys revealed a major new concentration of globally and critically endangered Balearic Shearwaters and continued presence of White-beaked dolphin, a threatened Priority Species, both in Lyme Bay. Marinelife has developed a Photo-ID tool that can be used by anyone to add any images for any dolphin species and helps capture sightings and images from a wider range of people, especially boat skippers who are out at sea on a daily basis.  A new peer-reviewed publication on the globally and critically endangered Shearwater has also been produced, exclusively using MARINElife data to support a candidate MPA.

The Sea Women of Melanesia (Naomi Longa) and the Coral Sea Foundation (Andy Lewis)

The Sea Women of Melanesia (SWoM) programme (run by the Coral Sea Foundation) aims to empower indigenous women through scuba diving and marine science skills, enabling them to take an active role in creating and monitoring MPAs within their local region. This also helps boost community awareness and engagement, which is essential for effective MPA designation and management. The SWoM programme has trained over 28 women in two countries and has directly contributed to the initiation and maintenance of more than 15 locally managed marine reserves and contributes funding support to seven reef survey teams of indigenous trainees. The programme meets four of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is the first of its kind in the region. Watch the short film here.

“The ironic thing is that about half of Melanesia was traditionally under matrilineal tenure for thousands of years – women owned the land and reefs and made the decisions about how it was used. In the last couple of decades, in collision with the modern world, cash economies came in and those traditional roles of female landowners have often been subverted.” – Dr. Andy Lewis, CEO, Coral Sea Foundation

Return to the finalist page here.