Most families along our coast have fished for generations. When fish become scarcer, rules about where and how to fish cannot be the only answer. People also need other ways to put food on the table.
In 2018, an assessment by IPBES (opens in a new tab), the intergovernmental science panel on biodiversity, warned that if current trends continue, the Asia-Pacific could run out of fish stocks for commercial fishing by 2048. That is a projection, not a certainty, and we work so it doesn’t come true.
Our approach is practical. We support work that earns money, that local people want to do and that gives a community a reason to keep its reefs and mangroves healthy.
Three are running, one is about to start, and one has ended. Here’s what happened with each.
This was our first livelihood project. A USD 15,000 grant from the Rufford Foundation in 2016 allowed us to set up beekeeping in the mangroves for seven families in Lutoban, Zamboanguita, and about a dozen beekeepers in Bais. The bees forage on mangrove flowers, linking the income directly to a healthy forest.
Beekeeping is no longer running. The association it was built around later broke up, and the hives were lost with it.
In 2018, a private foundation awarded MCP USD 135,000 for ecotourism in Tambobo Bay. The grant funded the rebuilding of the bamboo boardwalk through the mangrove forest, and MCP staff trained the local guides who now run it.
Today the walk is run by the local association SIPAMACOWA. It takes visitors 500 metres through a 6-hectare forest, with guided tours, kayaking and bamboo rafting. The forest is the attraction, so the people earning from it have every reason to protect it.
Read how the project began.
Since 2020, our Pro Ocean team has collected more than 427,000 kg of marine litter from the coasts of five municipalities. Ocean Plastics Removal Credits fund the work, which provides a steady wage for 15 local people.
Every one of them comes from a fishing family, and several used to fish themselves. Their income now comes from cleaning the coast rather than fishing it.
Read more about our ocean plastics work.
MCP employs 35 Filipino staff, the Pro Ocean team among them, and every kitchen, grounds, maintenance, transport, security and school teaching role on our team is held by a Filipino colleague. Apart from the Pro Ocean team, their salaries are paid by volunteer fees.
Since 2025, our scholarship programme has taken young Filipinos through PADI training from Open Water to Divemaster at no cost, opening a path into the local dive industry. Scholars also learn our reef survey methods alongside the science team.
Read about working at MCP.
Our next project, seaweed farming in Siaton, is led by Elyssa, a marine biology graduate who joined MCP as a scholar. The budget is in place, the final paperwork is being completed, and we expect to start before the end of 2026.
Seaweed farming is a long-established livelihood in the Philippines, and done well it can sit alongside fishing as a second income.
Meet Elyssa in From Dreamers to Divemasters.
Few fishers give up fishing altogether. Research into seaweed farming in the Philippines and Indonesia found the same pattern: it can reduce some kinds of fishing, but works best as one part of a household’s income (opens in a new tab), alongside good resource management.
Our beekeeping worked until the association behind it fell apart. Good equipment and training can’t hold a project together on their own.
The mangrove walk earns money only while the forest stays healthy, so the community benefits directly from protecting it.
We would like to bring hydroponics to local families, but after a few false starts we haven’t yet run a pilot that shows it can be repeated and scaled. Until we have, it stays on the drawing board.
Livelihood projects are one half of the picture, and protection makes up the other. At Apo Island, just off our coast, decades of research have linked the no-take sanctuary to better catch rates in the surrounding waters (opens in a new tab) and to a tourism economy that much of the island now relies on.
MCP holds a permanent seat on Apo Island’s Protected Area Management Board and works with marine protected areas across Negros Oriental. Read more about our coastal resource management work.
Planting and protecting mangrove forests, with 31,000 trees planted to date.
Beach clean-ups, ghost-net removal and the Pro Ocean collection team.
Free PADI training to Divemaster for young Filipinos.
See all our community projects.