For Mazzella Maniwavie, the work in the mud of Bootless Bay is a return to her own history. As a child, she followed her father, a marine biologist, through these same inlets, watching him study the complex root systems that hold the shoreline together. Today, as a program manager for The Nature Conservancy, she leads Mangoro Market Meri, an initiative that organizes women to protect the forests they have long relied on for survival.
The challenge is visible in the growing skyline of the capital. Port Moresby has doubled in size over the last few decades, its expansion putting immense pressure on the surrounding ecosystems. Residents harvest the mangroves for building materials and cooking fuel, yet without the trees, the land itself begins to dissolve into the sea. Maniwavie and her team have recognized that the women who use the mangroves are the ones best positioned to save them.
The program focuses on creating a sustainable economy within the tide. Women learn to harvest Scylla serrata, the heavy-clawed mud crabs that live in the burrows between the roots, without depleting the population. In the markets of Koki, these crabs are sold alive, their powerful claws bound carefully with vines to prevent injury to the seller. This trade provides an income that makes the standing forest more valuable than the timber it provides.
By formalizing community land ownership and nursery management, the project prepares these villages for a future in the carbon credit market. But for the Egu family, the significance is more immediate. Each seedling they tend is a physical barrier against the rising storm surges and a promise that the bay will remain as it was when Maniwavie first walked it with her father.