Coral Communities

tagscape on the way to Zanzibar!

Karyn and I are on the way to a three-day workshop in Pemba, an Island of Zanzibar, from the 24th -26th July. It is focused on building resilience amongst coastal communities to changes in coral reefs. We are going to work together with the project team of Mwambao to facilitate community planning in ‘resource management planning’ using various visual methods as a way to share sustainable community marine resource management experiences. The workshop will be conducted in Wete and will be attended by Fisheries staff and fishermen from the community of Fundo village and its vicinity. This visual workshop was triggered due to the experience we gained from working with Ali Thani of Mwambao in Mauritius, and due to the foresight of Karyn Morrissey, Senior Lecturer, European Centre for the Environment and Human Health who applied for the funding for us to attend the workshop as part of the PML/Nerc funded project called Coral Communities.

tagscape goes to Mauritius!


Photograph by Andy Hughes

This time last week exactly, I had just finished making aquarium-based coastscapes with this community from Anse la Raie in Mauritius. More to come later but let’s just say, my dream of working with participatory video, QGIS and viviariums is completely coming to life through a project titled Coral Communities.

This element of tagscape is under development with many partners and is led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

The work focuses almost entirely on seascapes and is funded by The Natural Environment Research Council. There is much to develop so watch this space and the hashtag #coralcommunities. Photographers Andy Hughes and Jason Parsons are helping the hashtag come alive as well as making a film about how to do the coastscape community work.  Read more here –  one our first pieces of press.

Here is an overview of the project.