Arnavon Community Marine Conservation Area.

The short version. A small group of islands sitting between Isabel and Choiseul Provinces, the Arnavons host a regionally important hawksbill turtle nesting site. The Arnavon Community Marine Conservation Area (ACMCA) is community-managed and has been formally protected since the mid-1990s, making it one of the earliest community-led marine protected areas in the Pacific [1, 2].

1. The place

The Arnavon Islands are a small uninhabited group lying between Santa Isabel and Choiseul islands, in the Manning Strait. The marine area around them is a hawksbill turtle nesting site of long-running regional significance and an active no-take zone managed by the surrounding communities [1].

Location	Manning Strait, between Isabel and Choiseul Provinces
Habitat	Coral reefs, sandy turtle nesting beaches, sea-grass beds
Management	Community-managed marine protected area [1]
Formal protection since	Mid-1990s [1, 2]
Primary species focus	Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), reef fish, dugong

2. The organisation

The ACMCA is governed by a management committee drawn from the surrounding communities of Wagina, Katupika, and Kia. The Nature Conservancy has provided technical and operational support to the ACMCA over multiple decades [2]. Day-to-day patrol and monitoring work is carried out by community rangers based at a small operational station on Sikopo Island.

Programme components

• Hawksbill nesting monitoring across the nesting season
• Ranger patrols and enforcement of no-take zones
• Reef-fish and invertebrate surveys, in collaboration with TNC and visiting researchers
• Community education programmes in surrounding villages

Specific output numbers (annual nest counts, hatchling-success rates, patrol-days per quarter) are documented in ACMCA programme reports and TNC programme summaries. Travellers booking a journey to the Arnavons can request the most recent published figures.

3. Why the Arnavons

Two reasons. First, hawksbill turtles are listed as Critically Endangered globally. The Arnavon nesting population is one of the larger ones still functioning in the Western Pacific, which makes meaningful protection here unusually high-leverage. Second, the community-managed model is the right structural answer to enforcement in a remote archipelago. National authorities cannot patrol every reef. Communities can, when they have the funding and the standing to do so.

4. What a guest journey looks like

An Arnavon-anchored journey typically pairs three to four nights at a small partner property in Isabel Province with one or two days inside the ACMCA programme. Activities depend on season but commonly include:

• Hawksbill nesting beach surveys (peak nesting October to February)
• Reef-fish and invertebrate survey transects with rangers
• Sea-grass health monitoring
• Briefing at the Sikopo ranger station, weather permitting

5. How the money flows

Same structure as the rest of the platform. Of a typical $2,500 booking the conservation share is $500, paid to the ACMCA management committee directly. Where Arnavon-anchored journeys also use TNC-supported logistics, that cost is built into the package quote and passed through at cost. Per-guest day-rate compensates ranger time. Full breakdown on every booking confirmation.

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