We have been implementing a new program with members of the Koh Rong Samloem fisheries community.

Our team has been educating the community on the use of non destructive and sustainable fishing techniques, by helping the community understand how each fishing gear affects the environment we have been able to steer most of the fishers from the community into the use of traps and lines as opposed to nets, unsustainable and destructive fishing gears.

One family in the community has even taken this one step further and is now starting to select which fish they return to the ocean after collecting their traps.
As we continue our conservation, habitat and species education we hope to see more fishers becoming involved with selective fishing.
Our goal is to help all members of the fishing community understand about the different species their habitats, life cycles and breeding habits so they can select only the fish they need and can use for human consumption, this in turn eliminates bycatch and returns those species which used to be unnecessarily wasted back to the ocean. Some fishers are also starting to understand that returning pregnant species also helps to increase their catches in the future and returning fish that are still juvenile or will grow larger also helps for them to increase the market value of their catches.