Marine Conservation
The reef comes first. The art comes after.
Working with Marine Conservation Cambodia, on this coast since 2008, and with the fishing families whose livelihoods depend on what is left in the sea.
Be precise
Art for Kep is not a conservation organisation. We are partners to one, bringing art to their science.
Marine Conservation Cambodia is a Cambodian community-based NGO founded in 2008. It runs long-term scientific monitoring, seagrass and bivalve restoration, marine mammal research and anti-trawling support with the Fisheries Administration and coastal communities, and it oversees legislated Marine Fisheries Management Areas.
Each partner brings something the other cannot. Marine Conservation Cambodia brings the knowledge, the field work and years of trust with fishing families. Art for Kep brings artists, audiences and a way of telling the story of the sea that people remember. A reef structure that is also a work of art gets photographed, written about, visited and funded. Seen that way, a seagrass meadow becomes something people care about.
Art alone does not protect the ocean. Enforcement, monitoring and new livelihoods for fishing communities do, and they need public support and resources to last. Together we help build that support. Artists work with fishermen, scientists and young people in Kep. Their work shows the sea as part of Cambodian culture and part of daily life, and as something that belongs to the communities who live from it.
Mariculture
441 hectares for bivalves, and an income while the sea recovers.
The largest zone in the proposed 828-hectare marine conservation area is not the art. It is 441 hectares set aside for bivalve cultivation, habitat recovery and demonstration of sustainable marine livelihoods.
This matters because protection has a short-term cost. Restricting where and how people fish helps stocks recover, and in the meantime some families lose access before the benefit arrives. Bivalve farming answers that directly. It uses skills these families already have, it improves water quality rather than degrading it, it works inside the protected area rather than against it, and it earns while the wild stock comes back.
The zone is proposed and subject to technical assessment, environmental safeguards and Government approval. Marine Conservation Cambodia leads the mariculture assessment. Pilot family counts, species and expected household income will be published when known.
The families
21 boats, and the people who sailed them.
The hulls in Ten Boats + came from fishing families in O’Krasar, Phum Thmey, Kampong Trorlach, Phum Loak and along the Kbal Romeas Canal. Each family was paid USD 330 for their boat. Some hulls had been sunk for a year. Some were still working.
These families are not the subject matter of this project. They are the reason it exists. A twenty-five-year-old boat is retired because there is less in the sea than there was, and restoration, mariculture and art are three answers to the same problem.
Work and training
What the proposed area would employ people to do.
Boat operations. Marine guiding. Visitor services. Education. Fabrication and installation support. Research assistance. Conservation monitoring. Mariculture support. Administration and maintenance. The plan commits to Cambodian technical training and to encouraging women and young people into training, employment and education.
Reporting
Numbers, published every year.
Hectares under active management. Families in mariculture and what they earned. Hulls returned as reef. Sculptures placed. Dive surveys completed. Students taught. People from Kep employed, and their rates of pay.
The split
Two organisations, one project.
Art for Kep is an independent Cambodian non-profit. It programmes culture, residencies and public attention for this coast. Marine Conservation Cambodia leads scientific monitoring, restoration and mariculture assessment. Knai Bang Chatt and Kep West are founding partners providing venues and in-kind support — they are not Art for Kep, and Art for Kep is not a hotel department.
Donations to Art for Kep fund artists, commissions, education and the archive. They do not fund infrastructure owned by a related operating company.
Partners
