Near-shore fisheries along the coast of Kenya have been heavily over-exploited because local fishers' rights are not respected and use of gear like beach-seines is a destructive and unstainable way to fish. Overfishing depletes biodiversity, degrades ecosystem resilience to shocks, and reduces stocks and flows of ecosystem services essential to the wellbeing of poor rural families dependent on fish as a source of food and income.

Starting in 2005, WCS began working with local communities along the southern Kenyan coast to help them secure rights to their traditional fishing grounds and to manage them sustainably. This was the first attempt in Kenya to implement community-based fisheries closures. We worked closely with local communities to revitalize the use of closures (tengefu) and gear restrictions within fishing grounds. While not fully recognized in law, tengefu are recognized in customary law, as areas over which communities may exercise legitimate, hereditary claims.

Starting with a few communities we now help manage 13 tengefu arrayed along the southern coast of Kenya. As each tengefu moved from planning to operational we helped them to monitor their fish stocks, landings and income from fishing. Results are more than encouraging as they show clearly that effectively implement tengefu fishing closures increase fish biomass, increased catch-per-unit-effort (i.e., the weight of fish that can be caught in a given time period), and increase fishers' incomes.