WE BELIEVE IN A COMMUNITY-LED, HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CONSERVATION

“I applaud 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.”

Dr Sylvia Earle

President and Chairman of Mission Blue and The Sylvia Earle Alliance, National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence

Love The Oceans (LTO) was founded by marine biologist Francesca Trotman. Francesca first came to Mozambique in 2013 and witnessed her first shark killing in Jangamo. After deciding she wanted to investigate the sustainability of the shark finning industry in Mozambique, she conducted her Masters research on artisanal fisheries in Jangamo, then founded Love The Oceans after this in November 2014 to continue this research. Love The Oceans is a non-profit marine conservation organisation registered in England and Wales as a company limited by guarantee.

Soon after founding the organisation, Andrea Biden our Executive Director joined us and, after researching successful conservation strategies and how to create long-lasting change, they realised Love The Oceans needed a multi-pronged approach and the mission of the organisation was revised to the broader aim of establishing a Marine Protected Area in Jangamo Bay and the surrounding region.

LTO includes a vision of complete self-sustainability for the community through locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), making a successful conservation outcome eventually independent of Love The Oceans’ presence in the area.

Love The Oceans Conservation
In 2018 Francesca and Andrea founded Love The Oceans Conservation (LTOC), the charitable arm of Love The Oceans operations. Love The Oceans Conservation is a registered charity in England and Wales.

Love The Oceans Conservation has three Trustees and depends purely on charitable donations and sponsorship, whilst 100% of funds are spent on community and science projects. We are very grateful to our donors and we would not be able to do this work without them. If you’re interested in helping, please email Francesca at francesca@lovetheoceans.org.

Our 10 Year Vision

Love The Oceans Conservation has a huge range of projects, both science and community based, we’re looking to get off the ground in the next few years. Our holistic approach is a 10 year plan, by which time we hope to be in a position that the locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) are self sustainable with trained, local and passionate conservationists managing them. Click below to download the Executive Summary of our 10 year Conservation Strategy.

2020 Finances

Love The Oceans Conservation is a registered charity in England and Wales with the Charity Commission, charity no. 1184402. LTOC is also registered as a company limited by guarantee, company no. 11716192.

Where does our funding come from?

What will we spend it on?

Working together is critical to our strategy

Understanding and solving the underlying cause of any barrier to conservation is the basis for achieving conservation success. This is why our conservation model is centred around the local community, introducing education initiatives around basic marine resource management, ensuring sustainable development.

Teaching in two local schools, Paindane School and Guinjata School, creates an opportunity to directly introduce the benefits offered by sustainable marine resource management to the next generation of fishermen. This, coupled with spreading the word of conservation across the local community will help establish positive and sustainable interactions between humans and the marine environment.

Promoting and providing education around sustainable fishing methods will decrease by-catch allowing critical species, to both the environment and ecotourism, to thrive. This in turn will ensure a balanced and resilient ecosystem with increased biodiversity and higher fishing yields for generations to come.

In our swimming initiative we work with 4 – 18 year olds. This project gives individuals skills that could save lives, but also provide a source of income, alleviating poverty and creating more space for conservation. Swimming is critical to be able to utilise the marine environment through sustainable fishing practises and through marine based ecotourism. This, combined with our Ocean Conservation Champions program increases job opportunities for young adults in the area and ensures culturally-integrated conservation initiatives.

students have been taught marine resource management since 2015

adults and children have been taught swimming since 2016

children have access to free education due to Love The Oceans' work

new classrooms have been built through Love The Oceans funding by local builders

pieces of plastic removed from the beaches

hours of fisheries research

hours of research scuba dives

coral reef health surveys completed

hours of megafauna surveys

Science is key to successful conservation

Since it’s founding, Love The Oceans’ data sets have expanded hugely and now encompass a range of marine life and habitats.

Catalysed by fundamental data sets provided by baseline research, our mission in Jangamo is to establish a Locally Managed Marine Protected Area (LMMA), facilitating bottom-up control of fish stocks while protecting IUCN endangered species and taking steps towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal number 14: Life Below Water.

We collect data on:

Fisheries – assessing sustainability of local fishing efforts, species specific fishing pressures and predicted implications for the future

Coral reefs – assessing their health and diversity, resilience and recruitment.

Humpback whale – both visual and acoustic, to develop an understanding of the migratory population and a frequency of sightings database to prove the feasibility of this as a major source of ecotourism in the region, providing opportunities for employment and poverty alleviation

Whale shark and manta ray populations – working with other research centres in Mozambique we are building a regional picture of population counts, migratory patterns, and what this might mean for tourism in the area

Ocean trash – collecting trash off the beaches and oceans, logging this to assess composition and possible solutions. This trash is then upcycled into eco-bricks and used in local construction projects

Love The Oceans is working to publish this data and use it to lobby for legislation change to establish a Marine Protected Area, offer further species specific protection for marine life and change fishing legislation.

Scaling Up

By the end of 2020 local children will have access to secondary education through Love The Oceans work – previously education was available in the area only until age 13. We hope this achievement will help reduce illiteracy rates and increase employment locally.

2020 will see the construction of a purpose built community swimming pool to help teach more children how to swim. Love The Oceans is partnered with the charity Swim Tayka to deliver as many swimming lessons as possible during the winter school holidays.

In 2019 we were recognised as one of fifteen grassroots #forcesforchange globally by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and received international recognition for our work. We were highlighted by the couple again for our whale shark research, and they then made a significant donation to our swimming projects.

We are expanding our data sets, taking on new academic partnerships with universities, and our research is advancing now more than ever. Each day we are one step closer to establishing a Marine Protected Area in Jangamo.

In the future there is a possibility to expand our holistic bottom-up, community-led marine conservation model along the coastline, and through other less developed nations, striving for a broader impact in protecting the marine environment.