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Delivering both social and ecological outcomes is regarded as essential for conservation actions to be effective, particularly in regions where Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and local communities (LCs) depend heavily on natural resources. In the Indo‐Pacific, sustainable small‐scale fisheries are seen as potential win–win solutions. Here, we evaluate the opportunities and challenges of supporting IPs and LCs to sustainably manage and add value to a high‐value marine commodity using a case study from the Mwanus Endras Asi Resource Development Network (MEARDN) in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. Between 2017 and 2018, MEARDN, with support from The Nature Conservancy, implemented management measures exceeding national requirements and exported beche‐de‐mer that had obtained sustainable certification directly to Hong Kong. While initially successful, this initiative struggled to remain viable amid rapidly shifting governance, market, cultural, and social dynamics. Our findings highlight the challenges of delivering conservation and sustainable livelihoods where natural resource systems are subject to intense economic pressures.

In many tropical nations, coastal communities seek to manage their sea cucumber fisheries by establishing locally managed marine areas on their traditional fishing grounds. These managed areas can protect spawning stocks, however the extent to which they help to replenish nearby sea cucumber fisheries is debated, as nothing is known about the scales at which sea cucumber larvae disperse. In this study, we used genetic parentage analyses and statistical modelling to provide the first empirical measure of larval dispersal patterns for a sea cucumber species. We analysed tissue samples from 765 adult and 827 juvenile sandfish ( Holothuria scabra ) collected from five traditional fishing grounds of the Titan tribe, from Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. All adults were sampled from the Pere fishing grounds (the larval source area), with juveniles sampled from the Pere, Mbunai, Tawi, Timonai and Mbuke fishing grounds. Parentage analysis identified 15 juveniles that were the offspring of parents sampled from Pere fishing grounds, with six of these juveniles located in the same fishing grounds as their parents. The best-fit larval dispersal kernel predicted that the average H. scabra larvae travelled 15 km from its spawning location, with 50% of larvae settling within 6.7 km of their parents and 95% of larvae settling within 59 km of their parents. These results suggest that the Titan tribes’ desire to protect their H. scabra spawning stocks by establishing a network of locally managed marine areas across 65 km of continuous coastline is a culturally appropriate strategy, which has merit from both an ecological and fisheries standpoint.