The news we get from Africa here in the U.S. is heavily weighted towards disaster, war, and famine. It’s easy for us to forget that people do good things there too. For example, South Africa and Mozambique are working together to expand and link up their respective marine protected areas.

The Mozambique Marine Protected Area, Reserva Marinha Parcial da Ponta do Ouro, covers 678 square kilometers and stretches three nautical miles out to sea. It includes the Inhaca and Portugese islands and the Maputo Special Reserve.

Southern Mozambique is a vital nursery for commercially important fish populations, with fish, larvae and eggs carried in south-flowing currents into South Africa’s iSimangaliso Park.

The newly protected area now extends along 300 kilometers (200 miles) of shoreline and pristine beaches of the continent’s southeast coast - from Maputo Bay in Mozambique to Cape St. Lucia in South Africa, the southern boundary of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

Marine Protected Areas, the oceanic equivalent of protected wilderness on land, seem to be gaining in popularity these days. The more the merrier.