Marine conservation cambodia

About us

Who we are is a fairly simple question to answer. Marine Conservation Cambodia's volunteer and internship program came to be simply out of necessity. The rate in which the Cambodian waters and local fishing communities were being destroyed was unprecedented. It was not inconceivable that the fishing industry and livelihood of the fisherman would have vanished in 10 years. If this had happened it would have been more than a loss of income for these families. It would also have been the loss of a significant and fundamental part of their culture, potentially forever.
Illegal trawling by catchThe practices used for fishing were getting ever more destructive as fish stocks plummeted and the demand for sea products increased. From dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, electric fishing, to the massive trawling nets that destroy everything without discretion. All aspects of the sea were being decimated, the dynamite and cyanide destroying and poisoning the reefs, the electric fishing killing every fish, invertebrate, or living organism they pass over regardless of the sex, size, or species, and the massive trawling nets that uproot the sea grass, break the reefs and basically kill everything they come in contact with. It simply needed to be stopped. 
The country of Cambodia has had a very rough and hard history making their transition into what the country is today a very difficult one. Many aspects regarding the environment were simply overlooked. This wasn’t because Cambodia did not care; they simply had other more important pressing priorities to deal with. Mainly the welfare of their people for starters because what good is protecting the environment if you don’t have a population to enjoy it?