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00:00:10in
00:00:29in
00:00:36of
00:00:44of
00:01:00Ocean is extraordinary, it
00:01:02of helps regulate our climate, provides food and is home to
00:01:06some remarkable
00:01:08of creatures. Some look like they belong on another
00:01:11planet, others have a surprisingly
00:01:15familiar shape. Apparently the ocean
00:01:19has guitars too, just without strings,
00:01:23meets the gitter fish. In Gana it is
00:01:26critically endangered and some
00:01:32of of the people trying to... save it at the very fishers would use to catch it, maybe because they love
00:01:35deters, as much as I
00:01:37do.
00:01:46It looks like
00:01:46a cross between a shark and a ray and it has been gliding over the sea buds
00:01:50for hundred million years, but its future looks
00:01:53black. Their population is heavily
00:01:57depleted, but protecting them could put live.
00:02:06meet the common guitar fish, we bet it will strike a cold
00:02:10with you. this is ajua community on
00:02:13ganz coast where fishing is a part of daily life and the
00:02:17guitar fish used to be a common catch, not
00:02:20anymore.
00:02:40of Joseph's experience reflects a wider trend
00:02:44along west africa's coast line, all four species of fish
00:02:48that leave
00:02:48of the coast of Ghana are critically
00:02:53of endangered fish were not only valued as food,
00:02:56their fins are considered the delicacy beyond garder borders.
00:03:01of
00:03:19of
00:03:30very slowly, making it particularly vulnerable to
00:03:33overfission. Marine biologist Isa sedu has made it his
00:03:36mission to protect guitar
00:03:38fish.
00:03:42They are messo predators in the mar
00:03:45ecosystem which feed on
00:03:49invertebrates. The absent
00:03:51of these species can impact the balance of
00:03:55life in the marine ecosystem, because they control the
00:03:58population of. these invertible species
00:04:02from growing disproportionately in our may
00:04:06ecosystems. researchers like Isa have observed that some
00:04:09species such as the sawfish have already disappeared from
00:04:13Ganean waters and without
00:04:16of urgent action guitar fish could face the same fate. in the
00:04:191980s they were get if they were getting
00:04:23of over 200 individuals perfection trip now it has reduced
00:04:27tremendously to now some
00:04:29of the are getting as low as even 10 individuals or 15
00:04:33of individuals per fishing trip, which is quite
00:04:36alarming. isa saidu and his team are tackling the
00:04:40problem on several fronts, reducing accidental catches of
00:04:43guitar fish, identifying remaining populations and
00:04:47creating alternative sources of income for fishes, but
00:04:51convincing them isn't alway
00:04:52easy.
00:05:06in
00:05:24so how can certain fish species be protected without causing
00:05:28hardship? one answer may
00:05:31lie on land rather than at sea. the marine
00:05:35conservationist have helped to develop snail farming as new
00:05:39source of income for more than 50 fishermen a and
00:05:43other coastal communities, snail farms don't require
00:05:46much in the way of running cost, it can even be more
00:05:50lucrative than
00:05:51fishing. giant snail meat
00:05:55is a good source of protein, the hope is to
00:05:59persuade more fishes to tend to part time snail
00:06:02farming, especially during the closed and spawning
00:06:05season. fishers are also being trained how to release guitar
00:06:09fish unharmed when they get accident.
00:06:14and further the coast the ngo
00:06:17is teaching them
00:06:17to use gps tracking so they can help monitoring
00:06:21airports.
00:06:44the goal is to set up locally managed marine area where guitar fish are
00:06:47protected. fishers have already mapped 15 square kilometers of
00:06:51critical habitat. the data they have collected is being used
00:06:55by researchers like Jessica and
00:06:57unis.
00:07:02wanted to publish my work so that the government or the
00:07:06fisheries commission will be able to see if possibly they can draft
00:07:10a policy that will protect cat fish because "there's
00:07:13no policy protecting race and race in
00:07:17Ghana, especially the guitar fish and the sharks, but there is
00:07:21progress in April 2026, Ghana declared its first
00:07:25marine protected area a 703 square
00:07:28kilometer conservation zone off the coast,
00:07:32it aims to protect the spowning and nursery grounds of various
00:07:36pieces, all of this should help this ancient marine
00:07:40creature, the guitar fish to.
00:07:45It's quite insightful to document this film
00:07:49in throughout the coastal communities that we visited, I have seen a
00:07:52suit transformation. One is one that touches my heart
00:07:56is how fishes now understand that a particular
00:08:00species that's a guitar fish is getting extinct and
00:08:04they also want to help in the conservation effort,
00:08:08why? because thisese fishes understands the
00:08:11implications that the extension these
00:08:14guitar fish can have on the balance of
00:08:18life in the marine
00:08:19ecosystem.
00:08:30meat kelp: it is one the busiest water plants. it
00:08:34starts the day by supporting fisheries, then removes excess
00:08:38nutrients from the water and stores huge amount.
00:08:42of carbon, now the giant calp can grow 60 centimeters a
00:08:46day in ideal conditions, it's underwater
00:08:49forests are big bustling neighborhoods
00:08:53where over 1,500 animal species
00:08:56consider it home. scientists reckon
00:09:00kelp forest capture huge amounts of carbon every year
00:09:04helping us fight climate change. now one study values its
00:09:08ecological services at around 500 b
00:09:12million US dollars a year, the catch around the
00:09:16world, kelp forests are shrinking fast, so some
00:09:19clever people are asking, what if we didn't
00:09:23just protect kelp but farmed
00:09:27it? for years, fortune seekers
00:09:31flock to luderit on the namibian coast to deep for
00:09:34diamonds, but there's another tiny treasure to be found
00:09:38here, not under the soil but beneath the ocean surface,
00:09:42it's contained in these seeds that grow into giant calp, the
00:09:45largest these species of
00:09:47seaweed.
00:09:51to find out what is so special about calp, we visited a project that's
00:09:55trying to unlock its value for commercial
00:09:58reasons and to combat climate
00:10:01change. this is what we are farming here
00:10:05in the shawara bay and as you can see this is beautiful calp,
00:10:09this calp grows very fast, it can grow up to 30
00:10:12cm per day and up to 60 m in
00:10:16height so it's really beautiful, it's rich a lot of
00:10:20compounds like alginate uh fucoiden,
00:10:23fucoxanthines and really lot of polyphenols, which is what
00:10:27we want in our biostimulant, which is the product that we make when you harvest it from
00:10:31the farm. the harvested calp is used as a biostimulant
00:10:35agriculture and in cosmetics and it also captures
00:10:38carbon dioxide as it
00:10:40grows.
00:10:45the seedlings are hatched under laboratory conditions with each baby plant
00:10:49attached to a line wrapped around a
00:10:50spool. each line
00:10:54holds nearly 80 such plants that are wrapped around growing
00:10:58structures in the underwater
00:10:59farm.
00:11:03the namibian coast is a kelp hotspot thanks to the benguela
00:11:07current that brings cold and nutrient rich water from the southern
00:11:10Atlantic and provides all the ingredients necessary for this
00:11:14jant algae to thrive. within months the seedlings
00:11:18reach the surface and produce a canopy like a land
00:11:21forest.
00:11:30"we are creating so much life in this forest and it's taking up lot of
00:11:33carbon every day uh contributing to carbon sequestration
00:11:37so I mean it's it's just beautiful
00:11:41place to be at and I can see it also on the faces of our
00:11:45divers, almost all the stuff are from
00:11:48Namibia, Zacharias Malienge grew up far from the
00:11:52sea but says he has grown to appreciate. the project, it means
00:11:56a lot really uh, apart from the fact that I
00:12:00able to support some of my family members like my younger
00:12:04brother who just recently started university, also just that pride
00:12:07of uh doing something which was not common to our
00:12:11community, by pioneering professions that speak
00:12:14directly to the blue economy, I think it
00:12:18will also show people out there that yes it's possible and we are
00:12:22able to find people within the... community who are able to do
00:12:26the job just as
00:12:27well,
00:12:33the diving team harvests over 12 tons of kelp from the
00:12:37canopy per day by hand, leaving the lower parts
00:12:40untouched, the collected calp is transported to this
00:12:43factory where it is processed into a range of commercial
00:12:47items, the main product is seaweed extract for boosting
00:12:50crop heels on land, the kelp can regre
00:12:55for a harvestable canopy every 3 months, when it dies, the
00:12:58carbon captured in its structures is buried in the marine
00:13:01sediment. Calpblue estimates that their farm could
00:13:05eventually remove one megaton of carbon from the atmosphere
00:13:09per year, equivalent to the annual emission of 20000
00:13:13cars.
00:13:17Figures like that remain projections, however, the company says it's
00:13:20still tracking the farm's carbon sequestration performance.
00:13:24They... the non-native kelp on the biosphere is also
00:13:28closely monitored, but the project has had some upside
00:13:31already beyond the creation of jobs on land. the new
00:13:35underwater forest has rapidly become colonized by many other forms
00:13:39of
00:13:39life.
00:13:46what is quite unique about kelp is that like it's not
00:13:49one species, they are this ecosystem
00:13:52forming - species so like, you can't imagine kelp
00:13:56without everything else that exists with kelp, so looking
00:14:00at that, when we grow more kelp and
00:14:03ensuring that the natural kelp is safeguard and left alone to
00:14:07thrive even longer, combined we have much much greater
00:14:11chance of fighting - climate
00:14:13change. while kelp
00:14:17aquaculture alone is no carbon capture silver bullet, it could
00:14:21be another tool to reduce climate warming gases and
00:14:25project like this one off the coast of Namibia can show the world the
00:14:29potential of this amazing
00:14:30algae.
00:14:46sea grass at the bottom the sea, it provides food and shelter to
00:14:50marine life, when washed ashore like here at the Baltic Sea
00:14:54Island of Pul,
00:15:30am Ende stehen vielleicht dann auch mal Einsparung im Bereich der Entsorgungskosten, weil zurzeit
00:15:34ist auch die Biomasse, die wir dann los.
00:16:07natürlich auch sehr sehr drauf gucken, wie teuer ist die
00:16:09Aufbereitung.
00:16:12After processing, only 5% the original mass remains as pure
00:16:16seagrass, the rest is stand. So far the seagrass has only
00:16:20been used in private construction projects, approval processes are
00:16:23currently on the way to certified as insulation material
00:16:27across Europe. Marits has already received inquiries from
00:16:31mediterranian countries and da gibt's
00:16:34z.B. hier eine Eigenart, die wir jetzt von Azoren zugeschickt bekommen
00:16:38haben, die stellt da ein riesengroßes Abfallproblem da, also ähnlich wie das Seegras
00:16:42hier, ist da diese Alge, die sich, wenn sie getrocknet ist, gar nicht
00:16:46so unterscheidet von so einem
00:16:47Segrasblatt.
00:17:07Substances uns kümmert auch so ein bisschen die Entsorgung,
00:17:11weil wir halt ein Alt Bausanieren, kennt man sich ja aus mit Sachen, die man
00:17:15entsorgen muss, und ich kann mir vorstellen, dass man Seegras, falls man
00:17:19das Haus irgendwann wieder abreißen sollte auch leichter wieder
00:17:23recykeln
00:17:23kann.
00:17:36Und dadurch, dass der... kunde vorhat oben drauf mit dielen zu arbeiten, die also Atmungs
00:17:40oder Atmung zulassen, kann das Material noch eine Stärke ausspielen, die
00:17:44man bei Dämmung erstmal gar nicht denkt, und zwar die Feuchte Regulation, das
00:17:48Material kann Feuchtigkeit aufnehmen und auch wieder abgeben, ähnlich wie auch ein Lebenputz
00:17:52und das sorgt dafür, dass die Gesundheit im Raum deutlich erhöht
00:17:54wird.
00:18:02aims to further refine his process and expand to process tens of thousands of
00:18:06tons of seagrass. from other communities along the Baltic Sea
00:18:09coast, lowering cost and increasing
00:18:12supply.
00:18:17In one the wettest places on earth, you would think
00:18:21the challenge is staying dry, so why would anyone there
00:18:25struggle to fill a glass of water? Clearly, the
00:18:29weather forcust doesn't tell the whole
00:18:31story.
00:18:35Cook, clean, farm, fetch.
00:19:38We are in Mosinram which holds a Guinness World record for the highest
00:19:42average annual rainfall, receiving nearly 1,200
00:19:45centimeters of rain each
00:19:47year,
00:19:52and yet in one the wettest places on earth, villagers like
00:19:56Monica have had to plan their entire day around the availability of
00:20:00water, often losing hours each day in the process
00:20:04and
00:20:41Meghalaya lies within the baraak meghana river
00:20:43bason, yet even in high rainfall
00:20:47areas like Monica's village bongkong steep
00:20:50terrain, rocky geology, deforestation and changing
00:20:54land use cause rainwater to run off quickly, leaving little
00:20:58to recharge the underground aquafers that feed
00:21:01springs. this is environmental
00:21:04scientist b.k. tiwari, no
00:21:07relation. he studied Meghalaya's paradoxical
00:21:11rainfall patterns for decades. the Meghalaya receives highest rainfall,
00:21:15but this highest rainfall is confined only to a
00:21:19small area. near cheerapunji
00:21:22and
00:21:23mosen rom and that platu, rest of Meghalaya receives up to
00:21:27250 300 centimeter rainfall which is not very high,
00:21:31then again the rain is confined to about six months in
00:21:35year, otherwise it's dry,
00:21:37particularly the months of December to
00:21:41February is quite
00:21:42dry, across
00:21:46Meghalaya, nearly 80% of people depend on spring. for
00:21:50the daily water, these are natural
00:21:53outlets where ground water reaches the surface, but
00:21:57many these springs once perennial are now becoming
00:22:00seasonal. climate change has definitely caused some
00:22:04variability in distribution of rain
00:22:08and intensity of rain. the population is
00:22:11increasing and the consumption and
00:22:15production is increasing, so this has
00:22:18definitely put pressure on
00:22:22most the natural resources, including
00:22:24water, but the region is
00:22:28finally getting some help, youth volunteers like
00:22:32Kintivang Karbani are stepping in to protect the springs the communities
00:22:36rely on. They track across the hills,
00:22:39tracing water sources, mapping recharge zones
00:22:43and digging contour trenches. They also plant
00:22:47native trees to help rain water seat back. to the
00:22:50ground, they're not just fixing the point where water
00:22:53emerges, but restoring the entire spring shed, the hidden
00:22:57underground system that keeps a spring alive.
00:23:01what began as youth activism soon grew into a statewide
00:23:04effor.
00:23:08in just over one year, more than 55,000 springs across
00:23:12Meghalaya were documented, helping identify which were drying
00:23:15up and where urgent action is
00:23:17needed. Since
00:23:202014, these grassroots efforts have been supported and expanded
00:23:24by
00:23:24the state under the spring protection
00:23:26initiative.
00:23:30Vankit Keswar, deputy project director at the Meghalaya Base and Development
00:23:33Authority, now helps coordinate and guide this work across the
00:23:37region, bringing together local communities and government efforts.
00:23:41We leverage on the power the communities, we only give them the
00:23:45devices, showed them how to calibrate, how to measure and we were
00:23:49able to monitor. number of parameters like for example amount
00:23:53of dissolved solids that it has,
00:23:55saninity, electrical conductivity, to
00:23:59physical aspects like discharge, how how was the discharge every month and
00:24:03so all were dependent on these springs in the
00:24:05village, but restoring springs in
00:24:09Meghalaya is not just about water, it's also about
00:24:12land. nearly 95% of land here is
00:24:16owned by clans and families under customary law, not by
00:24:20government, that means many springs lie on private land,
00:24:24even though entire villages depend on them.
00:24:27managing water therefore requires negotiation, trust and
00:24:31collective agreement, especially when land owners no longer live there or when
00:24:35community land is
00:24:36scarce.
00:24:42there are many good examples where private owners have you
00:24:46fullhearly given their land, but you still encounter those issues.
00:24:50in many places where they don't have community lands, then the
00:24:53limit of your interventions, you
00:24:55becomes smaller.
00:24:59back in Monica's village, the springs are flowing
00:25:02again, over dozen have been restored and are now
00:25:06maintained by residents like her through regular cleaning,
00:25:09monitoring and
00:25:10protection.
00:25:50Monicas no longer have to hike miles in search of