Jangamo Bay Hope Spot
The expansive coast along Mozambique’s Jangamo Bay offers a warm welcome to its visitors with serene blue waters, rolling sand dunes and idyllic palm trees. In Jangamo Bay, tourists can witness migrating humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and connect with manta rays (Mobula alfredi and Manta birostris) beneath the surface.
Click on the Mission Blue icon for a quick view of the Hope Spot. On the lower right side of the map, you can zoom in to get a closer look! When you're done, click on the "exit full screen mode" icon on the upper right (two inward facing arrows).
Unfortunately, the area also experiences the prominent global issue of overfishing due to unsustainable practices, including shark killing. However, local nonprofit marine conservation organization Love The Oceans has been working to transform this fishing-fueled economy into an economy supported by ecotourism backed by a healthy marine ecosystem.
Photo: Jeff Hester
Love The Oceans has delivered sustainable fishing workshops and educational projects teaching sustainability, biology and marine resource management to more than 1,250 school children to spark a passion for marine life and the ocean within the next generation. Their ultimate goal is to create a marine protected area (MPA) in the Bay through a grassroots, community-led approach.
Photo: (c) Jeff Hester, Photographers Without Borders
Mission Blue has declared Jangamo Bay a Hope Spot in recognition of Love The Oceans’ work to protect the area’s magnificent populations of cetaceans and elasmobranchs, and their efforts to create an MPA in partnership with the community and mitigate unsustainable fishing practices.
Francesca Trotman, Hope Spot Champion and Founder of Love The Oceans, says, “Becoming a Mission Blue Hope Spot is a big step toward establishing a marine protected area in the Bay, and for gaining recognition for the area as a valuable eco-tourism asset.”
Francesca Trotman, Hope Spot Champion and Founder of Love the Oceans (c) Hasse Hedstrom
Dr. Sylvia Earle, Founder of Mission Blue, says, “I applaud Francesca, the Love The Oceans team and the entire community for doing what they can to push for a marine protected area in the Jangamo Bay. With knowing comes caring, and the education they’re bringing to Jangamo Bay can empower young students to become ocean stewards and protect their blue backyard for generations to come.”
Drone shot of the Bay (c) Ike Isaacson
Trotman first witnessed a shark being killed in Jangamo Bay, Mozambique in 2013. Deeply moved, she jumped headfirst into learning more about what she could do – and she knew she needed to move quickly.
In 2014, Francesca returned with three research assistants to collect data on the artisanal fisheries for her Masters’ dissertation, focusing specifically on shark and ray fisheries.
Photo: Francesca inspects found cut shark fins (c) Ollie Putnam
They found that their results supported the hypothesis that the shark fin industry is highly unsustainable. After researching successful conservation strategies and how to create long-lasting change, she founded Love The Oceans to develop educational and research programs with the broader aim of establishing an MPA in Jangamo Bay and the surrounding region.
Photo: Stella Levantesi
Allowing the Bay to recover from unsustainable fishing practices can encourage and strengthen a local economy that thrives on affordable ecotourism, thus creating more jobs and opportunities for local residents.
Unfortunately, these creatures are often victims of gill nets, which can kill rays as bycatch. Manta ray tourism alone is estimated to generate $10.9 million USD per year in direct revenue to dive operators in the surrounding Inhambane Province, and the wider economic impact has an estimated value of $34.0 million USD annually. Without manta ray tourism, the region could lose quite a lot of vital economic activity.
Photo: Francesca Trotman
In 2020, Love The Oceans launched the first-ever Sustainable Fishing Project in Jangamo, spearheaded by their Community Outreach Manager, Pascoal Nhamussua, and the Chief of the fishing community Gemo Guilamba.
Photo: (c) Sophie Lafrance
Through this project a new series of sustainability workshops have been launched, fishermen are helping collect data, and the fishing community has agreed to completely eliminate net use in the bay on project completion.
Photo: (c) Hasse Hedstrom
Establishing an MPA in Jangamo Bay would greatly increase connectivity between existing MPAs in southern Mozambique.
Jangamo is located in a migratory corridor for humpback whales and the Mozambique Channel serves as breeding and nursing ground for the Southwestern Indian Ocean breeding stock (breeding stock C) of humpback whales according to the IUCN.
Photo: Jeffrey Garriock
Substock C1 in Mozambique accounts for nearly 6,000 individuals – almost 10% of the world’s humpback whale population, making it one of the most significant breeding grounds in the world!
Photo: Ike Isaacson
Trotman says that with little governmental resources for establishing the Bay as an MPA, the most effective way a marine protected area can be achieved is through a science-based, community-led approach.
There is still much left unknown about Jangamo Bay’s marine ecosystem. In fact, the only consistent scientific research conducted in the Bay has been done by Love The Oceans.
At the community's request, Love The Oceans has built several classrooms at two local schools.
Photo: (c) Jeffrey Garriock
Perhaps one of the most remarkable programs they run has taught more than 800 children how to swim– connecting them with the ocean and the life within their local waters.
Photo: (c) Teresa Wood, Photographers Without Borders
Some of these children have progressed to Ocean Conservation Champions – in which young adults run their own conservation workshops in their communities and get involved with hands-on conservation efforts.
With the impact already made on the ground in just a few short years, there is a strong cause for hope.
Trotman says, “Our hope is to facilitate the needs and wants of the community to access tools for them to utilize and manage their own marine assets sustainably. That way, future generations can enjoy the ocean and benefit from it too, without the need to hunt endangered species. We hope to assist the implementation of the infrastructure to support this transition, and to continue to inspire conservation efforts both locally and globally, engaging international communities to recognize that they too have the power to implement change.”
(c) Ike Isaacson
To read the full press release about the launch of the Jangamo Bay Hope Spot, click here !
