For the last 10 years a coral reef monitoring program has been active in the northeast to assess the management effectiveness of the four oldest national marine parks of Mada- gascar (Tampolo, Masoala, Tanjona and Nosy Antafana).
This is a collaborative program between WCS and Madagascar National Parks
(MNP). WCS provided several SCUBA diving and reef monitoring protocol training to MNP field staff of the four marine parks. Also, each year a joint WCS-MNP reef monitoring cam- paign is conducted in each marine park. The last one took place during three weeks in December 2012.
Preliminary results are en-
couraging and show a greater fish biomass inside each no-take zone than in non- protected areas. The difference is most obvi- ous for fish of the following families: snap-
pers, surgeonfishes, parrotfishes and grou- pers. Also in 3 of the 4 marine parks a couple humphead wrasse, an endangered species (on the IUCN Red List) were observed.