Have You Ever Heard of a Fish Bank? | Our Planet Earth | BBC Earth

I love Kuru it's a home not only to me but also the things I love most which is the life in the water when I swim around the Kuru Marine Sanctuary every single moment is just happiness it's also home to such a vibrant loving Community which has shown so much resilience to the changes that we currently seeing there is a saying no fish no Village in the late 1900s this community experienced a serious decline in its fish stock we saw decline in livelihoods affecting not only food insecurity househo

ld income but also future generations and the opportunities that they had this fall in fish stocks was driven by over fishing in response to their losses the community came together to find a solution this solution was based on a traditional form of resource management called the tangu system where the community themselves decide to allocate a portion of their Marine scape and their fishery to see it be rehabilitated and have that bounce back to influence the livelihoods that it supports to prot

ect and replenish fish stocks fishing has been completely banned within the kuui to Conservancy since it was established in 2003 and work has since been done to restore corals within the Lagoon in the first 10 years the biomass of fish inside the protected area increased by 400% this is essentially a fish Bank by protecting the fish in the sanctuary and allowing the density of fish to grow to its capacity the fish then spill over into the surrounding areas providing fish to other fishing grounds

but outside of the sheltered Waters of the Lagoon the fish face threats that are well beyond the control of Kuru to's Community the pressures that our fish are now facing are tenfold you've got ocean acidification which is impacting the coral reefs you've got an increase in Sea temperature and a change in ecosystem conditions due to climate change this is driving some to question whether the community can cope with both the ban on fishing within the conservancy and the changes that are now happ

ening in the surrounding fishing grounds in 2023 a climate cycle began which could amplify the pressures already being felt in Kuru and Beyond during El Nino events warming surface waters impact ocean temperatures and currents as well as local weather from Australia to South America the last El Nino event in 2016 impacted the lives of 60 million people across our planet it is a phenomenon that the local community in Kuru know all too [Music] well the threats to this area are now being driven by

changes at a global scale which are impacting marine life across our planet this makes the protection that the Conservancy offers even more important protected areas can create sheltered Nursery grounds for juvenile fish which spread out and populate the surrounding Waters and storing Coral provides a vital Lifeline for the 25% of all marine species that are thought to rely on reefs at some point in their life cycle the decision to stop fishing in Kuru withu Conservancy might come at a short-ter

m cost to the local community but it will help to secure their livelihoods for the future in the face of our planet's changing climate the future is bright and Kuru are looking to share this knowledge and spread this approach with their neighboring fishing communities my hopes for the future of the planet is rooted in a concept very important to my upbringing and that is Ubuntu which is care for others embracing this interconnectedness in a shared future if we can all take a more collaborative a

pproach a more caring approach a more kind approach not just to our ocean but to each other I believe that we'll have a beautiful world [Music] [Laughter] [Music] e