Eda Davara Marine Sanctuary is a youth-led Papua New Guinean organisation working with coastal communities to protect mangroves, seagrass and reefs. We combine traditional knowledge with modern science, and we put young people and villages at the centre of the work.
We are led by young Papua New Guinean professionals, and we have worked at Kohua Beach in Barakau Village every year since 2023.
Our home is the Kohua Marine Sanctuary at Kohua Beach, Barakau Village, east of Port Moresby. From there we run research, education, a community mangrove nursery and eco-tourism, and each one builds on the others.
Three ecosystems hold our coast together: coral reef, seagrass meadow and mangrove forest. Our work follows the connections between them rather than treating them separately. We were founded in 2023 and incorporated as Eda Davara Marine Sanctuary Inc on 17 June 2026.
Three ecosystems. One coast. One community.
Mangrove forest · Seagrass meadow · Coral reef
Marine education from primary school to university, with EcoExplorers packages for schools and holidays.
See our programs →
Buy mangrove seedlings grown by Barakau women, or book a beach, mangrove or reef tour at Kohua.
Visit Kohua →
Mangrove, seagrass, reef and traditional knowledge surveys, delivered with the community.
Our services →
From our founding at Kohua Beach in 2023 to today, and the people who make it happen.
Meet us →A future where thriving coastal marine ecosystems are protected and appreciated through community-driven research, education, and sustainable practices and actions.
Advancing marine protection and conservation through research, education and community engagement, by empowering local coastal communities, youth and children through knowledge.
Our three education programs connect young people to the coast they grow up on, from a day on the shore to a full university internship.
EcoRangers learning about coral reefs at Barakau Primary School.
Grades 5–8 · Barakau Primary School
Children aged 11 to 16 from Barakau Primary School train as young ocean stewards. Through a marine ecological sampling course, mangrove planting, our nursery and coral rehabilitation, they learn to study and care for their own coastline.
33rangers enrolled in 2024Coming soon: Roots of Change, a children's handbook developed with the EcoRangers.
EcoExplorers and their guides at Kohua Beach.
School students · NCD & Central Province
Led by our research team, the Guardians of the Tide, EcoExplorers gives students a day as an ecologist: identifying seagrass and mangrove species, sampling with quadrats and analysing their own data on the shore. See packages
1,483students reached, Grades 6–12
EcoScholars on the hill above Kohua.
University students
Our internship program links academic study with community development. Interns join our science, law and policy, marketing, administration or community projects teams, and science interns carry out research supervised by our science team.
21interns · 90% now employedAlumni now work in conservation and tourism. About the program
Groups work with an Eda Davara guide at the Kohua Research Centre. Using our species identification keys, they identify seagrass and mangrove species, estimate cover in their quadrat, observe the animals living there, then analyse the data together on the shoreline.
It follows the same hands-on exploration as the Excursion Program, for young people keen to spend their holidays learning on the shore.
| Eda Davara transport | Own transport | |
|---|---|---|
| Excursion Program | ||
| Student | K100 | K80 |
| Teacher | K80 | K60 |
| Holiday Program | ||
| Child | K100 | K80 |
| Accompanying adult | K80 | K60 |
Transport provided by Eda Davara is sourced from the Barakau Village community.
Up to 35 participants a day at the Kohua Research Centre. Larger groups can run over several days.
Children are in the care of their teachers or guardians throughout. We have basic first aid on site.
To book, email edadavara@gmail.com
EcoScholars is our internship program for university students. Since 2023, students from the University of Papua New Guinea, Pacific Adventist University and IBS University have applied directly to join us. Interns are placed across our teams, so they finish with real field, office and community experience, and they drive most of our day-to-day work.
Mangrove, seagrass and reef surveys at Kohua, including our coral rehabilitation project, plus data entry and analysis.
Community surveys and traditional knowledge interviews, the mangrove nursery and village workshops.
Guiding EcoExplorers field days, supporting the EcoRangers and presenting at school awareness visits.
Guiding Kohua Beach Tours and hosting corporate and community groups.
Designing surveys and contributing to policy analysis and conservation dialogues.
Marketing, content, administration and project coordination.
University student? Get in touch to apply for the next intake.
When the community looks after the coast, the coast looks after the community.
Women of the Barakau community raise mangrove seedlings, or hagwa, at home and sell them through our Kohua Mangrove Research Nursery, which opened in May 2024. The seedlings restore the coastline and bring income to local families. Buy seedlings
Visitors explore the sanctuary on beach tours, hikes over Kohua Hill and river cruises through the mangroves. Local youth work as guides and in operations, and the tourism supports the place it comes to see.
We run practical conservation workshops with schools and villages, starting with a community mangrove nursery workshop in Barakau in December 2024. With TLM PNG we piloted mangrove rehabilitation awareness in Hiri West, starting at Kido Village in February 2025 and following with a community mangrove nursery workshop at Papa. In May 2026 we showed the Barakau Bayside community how to build and run their own mangrove nursery.
Community mangrove nursery workshops · Papa & Barakau
Every seedling guards the coastline, shelters marine life and supports a local family. Organisations can buy seedlings for staff gifts, CSR commitments or World Mangrove Day (26 July).
600Tau Sunialives at Barakau Bayside with her family, gathering firewood and shellfish from the mangrove forest.
400Lekwa Korina Douverilives at Kohua Beach with her family, gathering firewood and shellfish from the mangrove forest and fishing on the nearby reef.
K10 per seedling
Order by email at edadavara@gmail.com. Payment is by bank transfer.
Every tour is guided by our team and local youth, and what you pay goes back into the sanctuary and the Barakau community. Tours are for groups of 10 to 35, such as school classes, families, community groups and companies, and we curate special tours for corporate retreats and team building, plus seasonal specials like our Mother Nature Edition for Mother's Day. Past groups include Steamships Limited, Kina Bank and Coral Sea Hotel.
No alcohol. Kohua is an alcohol-free sanctuary. Please do not bring alcohol on your visit.
Tourism tours explore and enjoy Kohua
Walk the Kohua shoreline, a mix of rocks, sand and mangroves, then climb for views over the bay.
A bush track through the Kohua hills to beautiful views from the top, finishing on the beach.
Beach games are free, with volleyball available on request. The community market is open for you to buy food and drinks from local vendors. Restrooms are available.
Glide by dinghy through the mangroves along the Kohua river.
Head out by dinghy along the Kohua coast for views of the mangrove-fringed shore.
Swim and explore the seagrass meadows at your own pace.
Conservation tours hands-on marine conservation, open to all groups
Walk into the mangrove forest with our team and learn to identify species and read how the forest is zoned.
Explore the seagrass meadows and learn why they matter for fish and other marine life.
Help keep Kohua clean, collecting rubbish from the beach with our team.
Collect mangrove seedlings from the shore for our community nursery.
Plant mangrove seedlings to help restore the Kohua shoreline.
Snorkel the shallow reef with a guide and learn how we check coral health.
Groups we've hosted
Email us with your two chosen activities, preferred date and group size.
Everything we do starts at the Kohua Marine Sanctuary in Barakau, a Motu-speaking village on the Central Province coast east of Port Moresby. We have worked here every year since 2023, and it is where our programs, research and community enterprise come together.
Our main field site, where we survey mangroves and seagrass and host EcoExplorers field days.
Our second survey site in Barakau, part of our ongoing mangrove and seagrass monitoring.
Where women of the community raise and sell mangrove seedlings, and where we run nursery workshops.
Part of our eco-tourism program: hikes over Kohua Hill and river cruises through the mangroves, guided by local youth.
Home of our EcoRangers, the Barakau children training as young ocean stewards.
A planned wet laboratory on site, so research and youth science can happen at the source.
We carry out environmental and baseline surveys of coastal ecosystems for eco-tourism operators, coastal developments, conservation projects, NGOs and communities. You get sound science, and the community whose coast it is stays involved.
Plot and transect surveys of stand structure, species composition, regeneration, zonation, condition and disturbance, plus seagrass species and cover.
Point intercept transects and photo-quadrats for benthic cover, coral condition and reef fish. Anything deeper than we can safely reach is reported as unassessed, never guessed.
Structured questionnaires with photo identification keys, local names cross-referenced, and women and men consulted separately.
Kapala Beach Eco-Resort, Babaka Village, Rigo District, Central Province. The first environmental survey of Kapala Beach, covering two coral reefs, the seagrass meadow and the mangrove forest, with a traditional knowledge survey run alongside it. The work supports the planning of a community eco-resort, and the report is being reviewed with the Babaka community.
SalaMata Haus & Tours, Salamaua, Morobe Province. A six-day assessment of reef, seagrass and mangroves across 1.32 km of coastline for an eco-tourism operator, with recommendations for tourism and rehabilitation.
Our research team, the Guardians of the Tide, chooses methods that a trained community monitor with a mask, a slate, a quadrat and a GPS can repeat next year.
Our EcoScholars coral team, led by Shamnee Sugoho, surveyed Kohua's reefs and found damage from past dynamite fishing and coral bleaching. With the EcoRangers and Kohua youth, we are building a coral nursery to help the reef recover.
We have profiled the mangroves and seagrass at Kohua, recording 13 mangrove species and 8 seagrass species along transects and describing how they are zoned from shore to sea.
We photograph our seagrass and coral quadrats as well as scoring them, so an uncertain identification can be checked again later and the record corrected.
We publish a local name for a species only after at least 20 community members confirm it and the head teacher and village councillor review it.
Eda Davara works on the land and sea of the people of Barakau Village, the traditional custodians of Kohua Beach and its waters. Everything we do at Kohua is possible because of their welcome, their knowledge and their care for this coast. We honour them, and pay our respects to their elders, past and present.
We set up the sanctuary at Kohua Beach in Barakau Village as a place for research and learning. In June our team profiled the mangrove forest, then the seagrass meadows, and in September we ran our first EcoExplorers sessions, where children in Grades 3 to 8 explored the seagrass while older students surveyed the mangroves. Our first EcoScholars cohort joined that year, and we completed our first biodiversity assessment, at Salamaua in Morobe Province.
On 4 May we enrolled 33 students in Grades 5 to 8 as our first EcoRangers. Over the year they completed a seagrass sampling course, planted mangroves, helped fill our new Kohua Mangrove Nursery, learned about coral reefs for our coral rehabilitation project, cleaned up Tomisini Beach and visited the National Museum and Art Gallery.
With a Young Pacific Leaders Small Grant, funded by the U.S. Department of State, we ran EcoExplorers in three phases along the Hiri-Koiari coast: school awareness, a marine field day at Kohua and an inter-school debate at Barakau Primary School, where four teams of Grade 5 to 7 students from Barakau Primary, Tubusereia Junior High and GabaGaba Primary debated mangrove conservation, overfishing and marine protected areas, with additional support from Deloitte. The Member for Hiri-Koiari, Hon. Keith Iduhu, attended the debate, and the Hiri-Koiari District Development Authority has since backed expanding the program across the district.
A wet laboratory on site, so research, sample processing and youth science can happen at the source.
Opening the Kohua picnic area and starting on the first community bungalows.
Taking the model to more coastal communities: more nurseries, more trained guardians.
Moments we are proud of, from the screen and the news to the stage.
Guardians of the Tides, a short documentary about Eda Davara by Waldo Media Productions, directed by Oswald Nicholas (2025)
Watch on YouTube ↗Post-Courier (2023 and 2025), The National (2024, twice), EMTV (2026) and PNG Business News (2025)
Youth panels at CEPA's PNG Conservation Commodities Expo (2025) and the Melanesian Ocean Summit (2026)
Shamnee Sugoho selected for the Coral Triangle Initiative's Youth Ambassador Program (2024)
Our first Gala Night Fundraiser (January 2025), and incorporation as Eda Davara Marine Sanctuary Inc (June 2026)
EDMS is run by a four-member Core Management Team and a group of Team Leads: young Papua New Guinean professionals who volunteer their time to deliver projects and mentor our EcoScholars.
Core Management Team
Dika founded Eda Davara in 2023 and leads the organisation, setting its direction, partnerships and programs. A coastal marine biologist specialising in mangrove and seagrass ecosystems, she also provides the technical ecological support behind our work, leading survey design, data analysis and scientific writing. Dika holds an MSc in Environmental Science with First Class Honours from Auckland University of Technology and a BSc in Biology from UPNG.
Alena joined Eda Davara as a research volunteer in 2023 and now leads our field teams and nursery workshops as Projects Director. She has mentored more than thirty interns. Her mangrove and seagrass work brings science and traditional ecological knowledge together, and she works closely with communities on practical, inclusive conservation that supports local livelihoods. Alena sees this work as part of building a resilient, sustainable Papua New Guinea. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Papua New Guinea.
Leads our research program and reef health surveys, and was part of our first assessment at Salamaua in 2023.
Alban joined as a volunteer in 2023, when Eda Davara was still an initiative under Katalite Consultancy. As we prepared to become our own organisation, he stepped up as Director of Finance and Governance, and now oversees our finances and governance, putting his studies into practice. He holds a Bachelor of Business Management, majoring in Public Policy Management, from the University of Papua New Guinea.
Team Leads
Supports our governance and compliance, and works in our field teams.
Julia is from Niu Ailan, and for her, conservation is not just a cause but a way of life. She began as a volunteer and has led our communications team for more than two years. A marketing executive by profession, Julia has over five years of experience with community-based and youth-led organisations, working on projects across education, health and sport.
Leads Kohua Beach Tours, our eco-tourism program, and works in our field teams.
In the community
Runs our site at Barakau and is our link with the community, looking after village relationships and the day-to-day logistics of our programs.
More team photos coming soon.
Bring a group of 10 to 35 on Kohua Beach Tours, our eco-tourism program, for a beach tour, a Kohua Hill hike or a mangrove river cruise. Your visit pays local youth guides and supports the sanctuary.
Grants and donations pay for field equipment, transport and teaching materials for schools that have none. Organisations can also buy mangrove seedlings grown by Barakau women, or join us at our annual Gala Night.
Buy an Eda Davara cap, shirt or tote bag from our Mangrove Beautiful Resilience and Guardians of the Tide collections. Visit the shop
University students can apply directly for an internship and gain experience in science, administration, marketing, policy and tourism.
We carry out environmental and baseline surveys for conservation projects, and we partner with schools, villages and organisations that share our goals.
Every cap, shirt and tote bag helps fund our programs and conservation work at Kohua. Choose from two collections.
How to orderInspired by the mangrove forests of Kohua, which protect our coast and bounce back after every storm.
Our Eda Davara logo on the front and the Mangroves Beautiful Resilience design on the back.
A navy cap embroidered with the Mangroves Beautiful Resilience design.
A reusable tote printed with “Plant a mangrove, save our oceans”.
Named after our research team, the young people who survey, monitor and protect the sea at Kohua.
Our Eda Davara logo on the front and “Guardians of the Tides”, the name of our research team, on the back.
A navy cap embroidered with “Guardians of the Tides”.
A reusable tote printed with “Earth’s beauty is our duty”.
Email us with the item, size, colour and quantity you'd like (1 to 10 of each item), and we'll reply with payment and collection details.
We are happy to hear from schools, communities, students, visitors and funders.
