A remarkable conservation project along Türkiye’s Mediterranean coast is showing what can happen when local fishing communities become part of marine protection rather than being pushed to the sidelines.
Between Gökova Bay and Cape Gelidonya, conservationists, fishers and government agencies have expanded or created 18 no-fishing zones, strengthened enforcement and connected previously fragmented areas of protected sea. The broader restoration effort has worked across roughly 500 kilometres, or more than 300 miles, of coastline and helped nearly triple the amount of highly protected marine area associated with the initiative’s expansion.
The results extend beyond lines drawn on a map. Illegal fishing incidents in Gökova Bay have fallen by around 80 percent, fishers have reported improving catches, sandbar sharks have returned year-round and more than 36 Mediterranean monk seals have been recorded within the project area.
The project offers a compelling example of how marine conservation can protect biodiversity while also supporting the communities whose livelihoods depend on healthy seas.
Read the original Good News Network report on Türkiye’s coastal conservation success
The Project Began With a Problem Already Visible to Local Fishers
Southwestern Türkiye contains some of the Mediterranean’s most ecologically valuable coastal waters. Seagrass meadows, rocky reefs and coralligenous habitats support loggerhead turtles, Mediterranean monk seals, sandbar sharks and commercially important fish.
But the ecosystem was under increasing pressure.
Illegal and unregulated fishing had reduced fish populations, while expanding tourism was damaging sensitive habitats. Rising Mediterranean temperatures were also allowing invasive species from the Red Sea to become established.
The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme says coastal communities had experienced sharp declines in catches and target species over approximately 15 years. Nearly 70,000 people in the wider area depend to some extent on functioning marine ecosystems for their livelihoods.
Some parts of the coastline already carried protected status, but designation alone was not enough. Limited enforcement meant illegal fishing could continue, while separate protected zones did little for species that regularly travelled between them.
The solution was to build on an experiment that had already shown promising results in Gökova Bay.
Gökova Bay Showed That the Sea Could Recover
Conservationist Zafer Kızılkaya and the Mediterranean Conservation Society had spent years working with local communities to establish protection in Gökova.
The approach was deliberately different from simply announcing a reserve and expecting fishermen to accept it. Small-scale fishers were brought into discussions, no-fishing areas were established and community patrols helped enforce restrictions.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, this bottom-up approach produced ecological and economic benefits and eventually became a model for marine conservation elsewhere in Türkiye.
The early Gökova work reported recovering fish stocks, higher fishing incomes and the return of major predators. UNESCO has noted that fishing revenues associated with the conservation model increased substantially during its early years.
Those results became critical when conservationists approached fishing communities elsewhere.
Instead of asking local people to trust only scientists or environmental organizations, fishers from Gökova could describe what they had personally experienced.
That peer-to-peer communication helped transform skepticism into cooperation.
See UNDP’s overview of the community-led Gökova conservation model
Eighteen No-Fishing Zones Helped Expand Protection
In 2019, the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme began supporting a much larger effort stretching from Gökova Bay toward Cape Gelidonya.
The project area covered more than 62,000 hectares of sea and included six Special Environmental Protection Areas. Between 2019 and 2023, the initiative helped establish or expand 18 no-fishing zones. Three major marine protected areas also gained new highly protected zones through collaboration between local communities and government agencies.
By 2020, Kızılkaya said the expansion had almost tripled the amount of protected marine area created through the model following the earlier Gökova work.
The project’s wider conservation target has included more than 30,000 hectares of new no-fishing areas across approximately 700 kilometres of vulnerable habitat, according to the programme’s project documentation.
The key idea was not simply to create more isolated reserves. Conservationists wanted to reconnect habitats so marine animals could move between feeding, breeding and nursery areas without immediately encountering intense fishing pressure.
Marine Rangers Turned Paper Protection Into Real Protection
Protected areas can fail when rules exist on paper but nobody enforces them.
That was one of the central challenges along Türkiye’s coast.
Coast Guard resources were already stretched across migration, smuggling and other responsibilities. Conservation patrols therefore struggled to receive consistent attention.
The project responded by training local people, including former fishers, as marine rangers.
Their knowledge proved particularly valuable because they already understood where illegal fishing occurred, how local boats operated and which areas were most difficult to monitor.
By 2023, project teams had completed 1,145 patrols, increased patrol coverage by 39 percent and reduced reported illegal fishing incidents in Gökova Bay by roughly 80 percent.
The work was not risk-free. Rangers reportedly faced threats, physical attacks and dangerous confrontations while carrying out patrols.
Yet enforcement may be one of the main reasons the protected zones delivered visible ecological results rather than becoming nominal conservation areas.
Fishers Began Seeing Larger Catches Again
Restricting fishing can initially appear economically threatening to fishing communities.
However, effectively protected areas can allow fish to survive longer, grow larger and reproduce more successfully. Over time, some of those fish move beyond reserve boundaries into surrounding waters where regulated fishing remains legal.
Along the Turkish coast, fishing cooperatives began reporting better catches after several years of protection.
This effect helped change attitudes toward marine reserves.
The project demonstrates why the relationship between fishing and conservation does not always need to be adversarial. When overfishing reduces stocks far enough, protecting breeding populations can help sustain the very fisheries that initially fear restrictions.
Economic participation also gave local communities a direct reason to defend protected areas against illegal fishing.
Sharks and Monk Seals Have Returned
Some of the most visible evidence of recovery has come from large predators.
Sandbar sharks are now being recorded throughout the year within protected waters. Project leaders describe the area as an exceptional Mediterranean site for year-round shark presence.
Mediterranean monk seals have also returned to breeding caves.
More than 36 individual seals have been recorded within the project area, with camera systems and artificial intelligence helping researchers distinguish particular animals.
The wider recovery of Mediterranean monk seals remains fragile. The IUCN estimated in 2026 that roughly 800 to 1,000 survive across the Mediterranean and Atlantic populations, making the species one of the world’s rarest marine mammals.
Their return to protected Turkish waters is therefore significant because top predators are often indicators that enough food and functioning habitat exist lower in the ecosystem.
The Project Is Even Turning Invasive Fish Into Income
Climate change has introduced another challenge that protected zones alone cannot solve.
As the eastern Mediterranean warms, species originating from the Red Sea have expanded through the Suez Canal and into Turkish waters. Lionfish are among the most conspicuous examples.
Instead of treating them exclusively as waste, conservationists helped create a commercial market.
Restaurants and chefs were encouraged to serve edible invasive fish, while small-scale fishers were trained to catch them safely. Since 2020, around 18 tonnes of invasive species have been harvested through the project, with more than 1,000 small-scale fishers receiving support or training. More than 30 restaurants have reportedly participated in the developing market.
The project has also helped increase the market value of lionfish from effectively nothing to roughly $3 per kilogram in participating markets.
That creates an unusual conservation incentive: catching a damaging invasive species can generate income while reducing pressure on native ecosystems.
Connecting Protected Areas Could Be the Next Big Step
The work is increasingly focused on ecological corridors.
A shark, turtle or monk seal does not remain inside a boundary simply because humans have labelled the water a protected area. Many marine animals travel hundreds of kilometres during their life cycles.
A series of disconnected reserves therefore offers limited protection once animals move outside them.
The project is attempting to create a larger connected seascape where animals can move among critical habitats with reduced exposure to fishing and habitat degradation.
That philosophy closely reflects the global direction of marine conservation. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for at least 30 percent of the world’s coastal and marine areas to be effectively conserved by 2030, emphasizing that protected areas should be connected and equitably governed rather than simply counted by size.
Explore the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s global 30-by-30 marine conservation target
Türkiye’s Coast Shows Why Local Communities Matter
The Gökova-to-Cape Gelidonya project formally concluded its original funding phase in 2025, but marine restoration efforts are continuing.
Its most important legacy may not be the number of hectares protected.
The project demonstrated that conservation became easier to expand once local communities could see tangible benefits. Fishermen helped persuade other fishermen. Former fishers became rangers. Restaurants created markets for invasive species. Scientists monitored the recovery while government agencies provided legal protection.
That combination gave communities a reason to defend the ecosystem rather than regard conservation as an outside restriction on their livelihoods.
The result is a coastline where illegal fishing has declined dramatically, fish catches are recovering and species such as sharks and monk seals are returning despite continuing tourism and climate pressures.
Tripling protected waters is an impressive headline. Turning those waters into places where both wildlife and coastal communities can recover is the more important achievement.
