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armin, a fisherman from Karimunjawa in Central Java, says that in the past few years he has had to venture farther and farther to find fish, but continues to bring home smaller and smaller catches. Now 45, Sarmin has been fishing since he was 17.

With an income of about US$2.50 a day from catching squid, Sarmin must support a family of three
children.

Sarmin'€™s story is a familiar one. Over the last decade, from Sabang to Papua, the fish stocks that feed Indonesia'€™s 240 million people have been rapidly dwindling.

In the Coral Triangle that covers around 647 million hectares of ocean in Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the Philippines, at least 4.5 million people completely depend on fishing for their livelihoods, bringing in a catch worth US$9 billion each year.

In Indonesia and the Philippines alone, 10 million tons of fish protein are produced each year.

But stories like Sarmin'€™s add to a growing body of evidence that Indonesia is running out of marine life.

In one telling statistic, catch sizes by purse seine fishing boats based out of Jakarta'€™s main Muara Angke fishing port declined from 531.84 kilograms (kg) of fish per trip in 2001 to only 144.22 kg by 2005, according to a 2006 Bogor Institute of Agriculture study.

Other studies show similar trends. Fishermen in Seram, Maluku, were able to catch 1,076.6 kg of flying fish eggs per trip in 2008, but this dropped to 712.1 in 2010, according to a study by Hasanuddin University in Makassar.

Fishing communities and experts offer several explanations for why fish stocks are being depleted. Dynamite, potassium cyanide and other destructive fishing practices are the main culprits. Illegal fishing also contributes to this. But the biggest factor is overfishing.

While fish are a renewable resource, sustainability is threatened when harvesting outpaces regeneration or habitats are damaged.

Reducing the pressure on fish stocks is not an easy task. Aside from the economic and food security that fishing provides, fishing communities have strong cultural ties to the ocean, and many lack the will or the necessary skills to seek other means of earning a livelihood.

A more realistic option is to teach fishermen the value of sustainable practices. Halting the use of explosives or cyanide is a good starting point, while using fishing equipment in sustainable ways is also vital to protect reefs and fish numbers. Trawl nets drag in undersized fish and fragile species along with regulation-sized catches, destroying biodiversity.

Narrow mesh sizes of regular nets trap undersized fish. The regulatory framework governing these issues is adequate, but enforcement is problematic.

Perhaps even more importantly, fishermen need to be educated on where not to fish. Protecting Fish Spawning Aggregation (FSA) sites are crucial as the sites allow juvenile fish to develop properly before migrating into adjacent fishing areas, ensuring larger fish that produce more eggs and are more valuable.

However despite Forestry Ministry and Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry regulations designating FSAs as core zones where entry is prohibited, fishing communities often lack education on the benefits of leaving FSAs untouched, or even on where FSA boundaries are demarcated.

Deploying patrols to police FSAs is costly and ineffective, with the potential for conflicts that can escalate into violence. It also fails to foster a thorough understanding of the benefits of sustainability.

Instead, coastal communities should be educated on the benefits of participating in sustainable practices that safeguard their livelihoods.

Rare, an international NGO that helps educate stakeholders on conservation, works with numerous government agencies and NGOs in Indonesia and other Coral Triangle countries.

Rare'€™s Pride campaigns focus on '€œbright spots'€, places where local communities are already conducting sustainable practices, and harness social marketing initiatives to educate other communities about bright spots. They encourage them to take pride in preserving species and habitats and change environmentally destructive behavior.

In the campaigns, social marketing was used to engage local fishermen in the preservation of an FSA site in Wakatobi National Park, leading to a doubling of fish biomass yields from 300 kg/ha to 623 kg/ha in the span of 18 months from 2011 to 2012, with higher catch numbers and larger fish sizes.

Techniques including surveys, focus group discussions, town hall meetings and engaging local fishing cooperatives and community leaders have proven an effective education tool when combined with marketing implementation such as poster campaigns, songs, radio spots, festivals, even cooking and karaoke contests and soccer matches.

In another success story, fish biomass in Hombongan Marine Protected Area in the Philippines Municipality of Inabanga, increased by 400 percent, from 56 kg/ha to 299 kg/ha, within two years, showing the power of social marketing as an education tool.

Conservation ultimately comes down to people '€” their behaviors toward nature, their beliefs about its value, and their ability to protect it without sacrificing basic life needs. Only when we achieve this stage, will we see fishermen like Sarmin thrive in harmony with nature.

Taufiq Alimi is vice president of Rare Indonesia program and Toni Ruchimat is director of Area and Fish Species Conservation, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry. The views expressed are personal.