
New Sea Women of Melanesia Website
The outstanding work of our award-winning Sea Women of Melanesia teams is now showcased on a new website, designed by Mohea Moana from Gypseawave.
The site gives the Sea Women of Melanesia a fresh new platform from which to tell their stories to the world – check it out!


We are very excited to announce the next phase of the Sea Women initiative, with the creation of the Sea Women Great Barrier Reef program. This training program, initially based from Yunbenun (Magnetic Island), will provide First Nations women from Australia, the Kulkalgal Nation of Zenadth Kes (Torres Straits), and Papua New Guinea with advanced training in scuba diving, maritime operations, and marine conservation science, as well as facilitating collaboration, networking and cultural exchange between Indigenous women from the Sea Country around the Coral Sea arc.
Three early leaders from the program, Laure Senor, Zillah Midire, and Tishiko King, recently joined us on Jiigurru (Lizard Island) on our most recent expedition, and we made good progress in setting out the aims of the program while delivering the women ongoing training in marine science and discussing their hopes for the development of Sea Women Great Barrier Reef.
We thank our program partners the Jock Clough Marine Foundation, the Hughes Charitable Foundation, the Good Beer Company and Sobah Brewing for their kick-starter funding support of the program, and we anticipate commencing the first 6 week intensive training residency in early September.


Papua New Guinea
Marine Conservation Operations Update

Kimbe
SWoM Training and Reef Surveys The Kimbe Sea Women team, led by Naomi Longa, has had a very busy 6 months, completing numerous reef survey training sessions on the Mangana Reefs in Stetin Bay, hosting Government representatives, responding to a palm oil spill on the shoreline, and working with the landowners from Buluma and Mai villages on the development of the Pelelua Reefs LMMA Management Plan.


Milne Bay
Ferguson Island The Milne Bay SWoM team has been active across all our marine reserve areas over the last 6 months. Thanks to a generous donation from the Hughes Charitable Foundation, Lorie Pipiga and the team at Ferguson Island are in the process of constructing a new Sea Women office and training house at Sebutuia Bay to service the needs of our flagship Nua Marine Reserve Network.

Port Moresby
Reef Survey Training at Gabagaba Our PoM team have been working with the community at Gabagaba Village, 50km south-east of the national capitol, to survey local coral reefs as part of our ongoing training and capacity building program. Coral cover was high, especially on the reefs close to the coast, and the women have collected hundreds of geotagged survey images to support the community conservation efforts.


Great Barrier Reef Operations Update
MARST Program at Yunbenun The first 6 months of our Magnetic Island Advanced Reef Survey Training (MARST) program have been a great success, with 5 fantastic people joining our island team for 2-8 week residencies at Nelly Bay’s famous Jungle Club. Together, we collected thousands of geotagged reef survey images from most of the major coral reef bays on the island, and we have made excellent progress in setting up our Natural Feature Reef Monitoring Project which will help citizen scientists and the general public contribute meaningful data on the condition of the corals and reefs around Yunbenun.
We also collected detailed information on the responses of the corals around the island to last summer’s heat stress and bleaching event, and we are happy to report that bleaching mortality has been generally quite low and all corals have now made a full recovery.
Big thanks our participants Jimmy Tarte, Dr Andrew Coates, Marta Arroyo-Zufia, Nicole McMahon and Emily Horton for their hard work and positive energy while they were here with us – we miss you all!
Lizard Island Expeditions The Coral Sea Foundation team have made two expeditions to Jiigurru (Lizard Island) already this year. The first trip in April was to deliver the Lizard Island Coral Reef Study Tour in partnership with the Lizard Island Research Station and the Lizard Island Reef Research Foundation. This program took 16 high-achieving young people from the NSW public high-school system and immersed them in a 9-day reef ecology education program at the station. The program was an outstanding success (see LIRRF blog post here) and has laid the groundwork for the LICRST to become an annual event. Video highlights below.

Our second expedition was completed in late June, with several of our members and three of our Sea Women Great Barrier Reef team taking part. Despite some inclement weather, this trip was also very successful, with our participants learning our digital reef survey methods and seeing the awesome recovery of the Lizard Island reefs first-hand. A close encounter with a pair of octopus on the last day was a real highlight!
Coral Sea Foundation at UN Oceans 2022
As a result of our Sea Women of Melanesia program winning the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award last year, we received an invitation to attend the UN Oceans conference in Lisbon, Portugal in June.
Thanks to our supporters


