Pressure on a protected marine area in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi province is growing as conservation efforts intersect with mining activity.Moramo Bay is part of the Coral Triangle, one of the world’s richest marine biodiversity regions, and provides habitat for humphead wrasse and other protected species.Researchers and officials say the health of its coral reefs and marine life is increasingly under scrutiny as development expands around the conservation area.
SOUTH KONAWE, Indonesia — A marine protected area in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi province is home to a critically depleted population of humphead wrasse. The species presence helped the area gain its protected status, but mining permits overlap parts of the conservation zone and line its coast.
A 2024 government survey, published the following year, found just 22 humphead wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) across 10 sampling stations — an average density of 1.17 fish per hectare — in the Moramo Bay local marine protected area (LMPA) in Southeast Sulawesi’s South Konawe district. It recorded no fish at three sites where the species was still observed in 2018.
Officials and researchers say the bay’s coral reefs face mounting pressure from sedimentation, pollution, vessel activity and other threats, but no study has established a direct link between mining and the wrasse’s decline.
