MPA's in the Morovo Lagoon

MPA stands for Marine Protected Areas. Such concept is no novelty to us in Australia but what may seem a relatively simple undertaking in our country (despite the strong lobbies of recreational and commercial fishermen, for example on the Great Barrier Reef) is much more complex in the Solomon Islands.

Marine protected areas in fact are no novelty to Solomon Islanders either, but the islanders have mostly forgotten this. Traditionally, the chiefs were also closing certain reefs areas to protect them from fishing for periods of time and let them replenish. In older times, the chiefs had more power than nowadays and their will was respected. Recently though, there has been a drop in leadership quality within many communities and the push by outside initiatives is necessary to help conservation. As part of its water quality monitoring of the Morovo Lagoon, the University of Queensland team found out that fishing practices were the predominant threat to the coral reef ecosystems and that there was a need to reduce harvesting to help the reef recover. So they pushed for the communities to create a number of MPA’s. A tedious work undertaken by the UQ team with local boat driver and community educator Morgan.

Most people live on or by the water and use the resource



Though very traditional, fishing by a growing population pressures the reef



Morgan is helping the local villagers marking their MPAs with rope and buoys. Lots of buoys are needed shaping a very well defined line, says Morgan, because if only one or two mark the corners, they are likely to get stolen. This is one of many other difficulties and oppositions to the establishment of MPAs. Jealousy and greed are crippling the process, with some community members gossiping that Morgan is personally benefiting from the MPAs. Many of these MPA projects do not have their own dynamism: too often, an NGO comes in, provides all materials and does it all. As a result, people do not appropriate the project fully and if the NGO resigns activity in the area, MPA does not continue. The lack of good leadership is often the problem.



If no longline fishing buoys are available, a clever way to make some floats is to use bamboo stick, ballasted with cement at the bottom. A small flag is strapped at the top.



Morgan conduct underwater monitoring training sessions


In each MPA, regular monitoring is conducted by trained locals. For fish and coral census transects, a simple exercise for a marine bio in Oz, takes a bit of patience to train the locals. But they have the advantage of knowing their reef perfectly.


In particular, the overharvesting of grazing fish, enabled excessive algae cover to impend on coral growth, leading to coral death and the loss of habitat for other species of fish.


Together with excessive nutrient and sediment input from erosion caused by logging, macroalgae are getting a boost to invasion after every major rain event. With Morovo lagoon being very enclosed, with its double barrier, plumes get trapped inside, covering the coral with layers of mud.


Of course this is intermittent and in dry periods, the rivers are pristinely clean


Going up one of the rivers on Vangunu with driver Morgan



But the damage created by large ares of clear fell land is obvious in heavy rainfall. This reef is straight of the oil plantation of Meresu on SE Vangunu

Exploring the rainforest of Ngatokae Island

Another place visited to gather nice nature images for the DVD (see previous post on Morovo lagoon) was the rainforest. The solomon islands rainforests yield very high biodiversity, supporting a large number of endemic species and there is a strong need for conservation initiatives to protect them, project that the country itself can barely support, so a number of NGOs are involved.


Going along with Patrick Pikacha, a local conservation scientist who works for the NGO Conservation International, it was easy to take up a bushwalking trip to the top of Ngatokae mountain, Mt Mariu, to photograph the many frogs species that inhabit the forested slopes of the mountain.
Patrick works for Conservation International and is the founder and editor of Melanesian Geographic, the Geo equivalent publication for the Solomons/PNG

Ngatokae is an old volcano, now extinct, and its summit culminates at about 885m.

It is not a high mountain but because it is so close to the open ocean, the vegetation gradient is remarkably compressed from the tall lowland rainforest to the misty cloud forest, Species that would be found elsewhere at 2000m are found here at 600m here! This makes for Ngatokae high conservation values.

The first morning led us along an old logging road, now eroded into ferralitic soils and covered by the bush reclaiming its grounds.


The lower parts of the island have been logged ten years ago. The forest has now recovered to a lower canopy called secondary forest. Some of it remained cleared for the gardens exploited by the villagers.

Gardens are nested in the clearings
The secondary forest can sometimes a better habitat supporting a more diverse range of bird species than the primary forest. In some of the remaining tall trees, Eclectus parrot can be spotted. The female is red and from the throne of her nest, in a large tree hole, she monitors a crowd of green males who brings her food. This female eclectus was shy but I managed to “creep” her and take a shot

Female eclectus parrot, high in her tree

Up at 200m elevation, we enter the dark shade of the primary rainforest forest. Meandering amongst the tall trees, the tracks becomes softer and less slippery, the soil is covered in a thick layer of leaves and its very quiet.


We descend back towards the valley of the Kavolavata river which drops from the upper ridges of Mount Mariu. Beautiful volcanic rock pools and and relief to refresh when we arrive at the camp in a curve near the creek.




Robert is cooking up a feed of rice and 2 min noodle with onion and capsicum on the fire: breakfast, lunch and dinner!!



A Hennessy Hammock is once again a must in the rain forest!

The evening is spent looking for frogs. Patrick has a nice sigma 150mm macro lens that he’s lent me to take close ups. The frogs are found easily: as soon as it gets dark, especially after the bucketing rain, they start singing very loudly, though so small!

tree frog
Many species can be found on the tree trunks under leaves or inside the small water pools formed by the epiphytes.

eyelash frog, an endemic species from the Solomons-

The next day, a walk up to the 600m elevation mark took us through a fast transition to a sparser ridge forest with large pandani and later through the cloud forest, where short trees covered in mosses intricately mix with smaller species of pandani (not unlike Tasmanian ones) and ferns. Higher on the ridges, with a shorter canopy,

there are also a lot of orchids


The internet repeater is located on a clearing at 600m, and the only place where a sweeping view of Morovo lagoon can be enjoyed, and a rare sight as the summit is often in cloud!



Morovo lagoon and its many islands