Qualla: Koh Rong Marine National Park

Koh Rong Marine National Park: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cambodia declared its first marine national park in February 2018. The environmental rangers meant to patrol it were not expected on the water until the following year at the earliest, and the fisheries officers who already held jurisdiction were short of boats, short of fuel, and — by the account of the ministry's own marine conservation director — had not been succeeding. Five hundred and twenty-four square kilometres of the Gulf of Thailand changed legal category overnight and changed almost nothing else. That gap between the map and the water is the real subject here, and it is not a Cambodian peculiarity. It is what most marine protection looks like in its first years anywhere.

Image: Wikirictor | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Marine National Park: Drawing a Line Around Water

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TomFitzhenry, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park wraps the islands of the Koh Rong archipelago — Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem chief among them, along with Koh Oun, Koh Song Saa, Koh Tatiem, Koh Touch, Koh Manoa Krav and Koh Manoa Knong, plus uninhabited scraps like Koh Koun to the north. It did not appear from nothing...

Image: TomFitzhenry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Marine National Park: What the Seagrass Holds

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 4.0. The value here is not spectacle so much as inventory. Coral reef, mangrove and — most importantly — seagrass meadow, which is the least photogenic and most consequential habitat in these waters. Seagrass is nursery, pasture and carbon sink at once. Seahorses hold onto it. Sea tur...

Image: Wikirictor | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Marine National Park: Thirty-Five Grams of Reason

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 4.0. BirdLife International designated the archipelago an Important Bird Area, and the bird responsible weighs about as much as a slice of bread. The Malaysian plover stands fifteen centimetres tall, weighs between thirty-five and forty-two grams, and is near threatened with perhaps t...

Image: Wikirictor | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Marine National Park: The Paper and the Water

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rômulo Gama Ferreira from Vitória-ES, CC BY 2.0. Enforcement was the problem in 2018 and it has not stopped being one. Foreign trawlers work these waters, and reporting at the time described fishing access being bought from officials outright; Cambodia then ranked 161st out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corru...

Image: Rômulo Gama Ferreira from Vitória-ES | CC BY 2.0