Conservation that
pays for itself.

Pemba is the smaller of Zanzibar's two main islands — 988 km² of clove plantations and mangrove, with roughly 543,000 people living on it and a channel running down its western edge that has been fished by hand for as long as anyone has kept records.

It is also, quietly, where a disproportionate share of Zanzibar's fish comes from. Pemba lands around 38% of the archipelago's catch across 126 landing sites — more sites than the larger island of Unguja, despite a smaller population. Handline is the dominant gear across Zanzibar at 49% of all fishing activity. This is not an artisanal curiosity. It is the actual fishery.

What Pemba has not had is the infrastructure to turn that catch into value that stays on the island. Fish landed without ice loses its grade within hours. Fish without a record cannot be sold into a market that asks for one. The margin goes to whoever owns the cold store and the paperwork, and historically that has not been the person who caught the fish.

The model

Marine protection in the Western Indian Ocean has largely been funded by grants — which arrive unpredictably, end abruptly, and leave the communities doing the protecting no better off structurally than before. Pemba's own conservation area is co-managed through Shehia Fisher Committees, with a co-management agreement signed in 2023 on a five-year renewable mandate.

Our position is straightforward: a fishery that produces a premium product — sold to mainland Tanzania today, graded to an export specification for the markets after that — can fund its own protection, permanently, out of trade. That means paying above the beach price for fish that meets the standard, investing in ice and cold storage on the island, and training fishers in handling and traceability so the value is created where the fish is caught.

What the fishery actually looks like

Peer-reviewed survey work inside the conservation area gives a clear-eyed picture, and it is not uniformly flattering. Among fishers surveyed, handlines were the most-used gear at 33.3%, but 19.2% reported using prohibited gear of some kind. Only 52.5% held a valid fishing licence, and 64% were unaware of the regulations that apply to them. Of the three-quarters who had observed a change in catch over five years, 89.2% reported it going down.

We publish these numbers because they are the operating reality, and because a supplier who tells you the fishery is uniformly healthy is telling you they have not looked. The reason to buy from a traceable, licensed, single-hook supply chain is precisely that these problems exist.

Where we are, honestly

We are an early-stage business building a cold chain in a place that does not yet have one. We have a fleet we work with, a grading standard, a freezing specification and a record format. Today our fish leaves Pemba for buyers on mainland Tanzania; we do not yet export internationally, and the HACCP facility is what makes that step possible. We do not yet have our own published observer data, a completed DNA verification programme, or third-party certification. Those are on the roadmap and we will publish them when they exist — not before.