Meeting Dr Camilla Floros, Marine Conservationist & Coral Reef Specialist

Lisa Grainger meets Dr Camilla Floros, a marine biologist on a mission.

Dr Camilla Floros On The Future Of Marine Conservation

Dr Camilla Floros is one of those rare people who from a young age knew exactly what she wanted to do – in her case, become a marine biologist. Although she’d grown up in a small rural town in South Africa, her father was a real adventurer and sea-lover, so for their holidays they’d often drive to Mozambique. It was here, around the Bazaruto Archipelago, she became ‘obsessed with the ocean,’ she says. ‘It was my paradise.’

It was also here that she realised the damage fishing was doing. ‘I could see how they’d drag the nets and damage the reefs, also capturing seahorses, baby fish and puffer fish they couldn’t eat. I thought: “There has to be another way.”

Today, aged 47, Floros is one of most experienced marine conservationists working on the African continent. She has been awarded a doctorate from the Oceanic Research Institute, spent four years in Asia out at sea, and worked for wildlife-trade monitoring specialists TRAFFIC, tracking down and helping governments catch poachers. Unlike many of her contemporaries, her research involves not just the ocean, but coastal communities. ‘I saw, early on, that these people needed the ocean – they relied on it for their livelihoods – but that there might be ways to manage and educate them about what they took, and how they fished.’

Zanzibar Mnemba Island Coral Dive

Today, as the principal scientist for Oceans Without Borders and marine manager for the Africa Foundation, dealing with the impacts of overfishing and over-tourism, she has to call on this experience on a daily basis. As she reminds me: by 2050 a quarter of the world’s population will be in Africa, putting huge pressure on its environment. In addition, many African governments have granted fishing rights to countries such as China, whose mammoth trawlers net species of all kinds and sizes, from turtles and dugongs to whales.

Plus, there’s climate change. When Floros was researching coral for her master’s degree, bleaching – in which the coloured ‘animal’ part of the reef dies – wasn’t recognised as a global threat. ‘The bleaching of 1999 was totally new.’ Since then, though, there have been four mass bleachings affecting reefs in 52 countries, from Australia’s Barrier Reef to her own patch, around Mnemba Island off Zanzibar, where water temperatures rose to 31°C ‘in which coral just doesn’t survive’.

While she recognises that climate change requires global action, what local communities can do can make a huge difference. In Zanzibar today, a Marine Conservation Zone has been created, thanks in part to Mnemba’s sustainability manager Jonathan Braack setting huge areas of coast aside for marine regeneration. Tourist boats now have to pay a fee to explore the waters, funding conservation efforts. Over 1,500 nature lessons a year are given to local children and teachers, to expand their knowledge. Plus, off Mnemba Island, Floros’s team has created metal frames on which they’ve tied coral, to try and regrow species decimated by bleaching and to provide alternative spots for snorkellers.

The key message is, she says, that every person can play their part in helping to maintain the health of our oceans. ‘As a snorkeller: don’t touch anything; don’t stand on corals; don’t feed the fish; don’t throw rubbish in the ocean as it’s one of the biggest threats to fish. If you’re on a boat, moor on a buoy, rather than throwing an anchor down. And if you’re eating seafood, make sure it’s not a valuable reef species but a transient species that grows fast and reproduces quickly.’ And finally, she adds, ‘please don’t collect shells. They belong to hermit crabs and in the ocean. They’re homes to something. And when broken down, they replenish beaches.

The key, she says, is this: ‘stop and think: “Will this make our lives better, and our oceans better?” That’s what we need.’

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