Beatrice Nutekpor crosses the Densu Estuary each day, weaving through the mangroves. At 49, she’s been picking oysters since she was 15. It’s a tradition passed down from her late mother — and now to her own daughter.

“Just as my mother taught me this business, I also want to teach my daughter so that she could also teach her child. Then oyster farming will become our family’s business,” she said.

In Ghana’s coastal mangroves, oyster farming has been a women-led livelihood for centuries. A single basin of oysters sells for the equivalent of four U.S. dollars — enough for Nutekpor to feed her family and put her daughters through school.

But mangrove clearing, pollution and coastal development have threatened this.

Nutekpor was trained by the Development Action Association, funded by USAID, to harvest oysters more sustainably. Instead of cutting into mangrove roots, women now use methods that help restore them, as well as methods to sustain the mangrove ecosystem.

The change is already visible. Nutekpor said the oysters have started attaching themselves to the mangroves they have planted.

“At first we didn't know the importance of the mangroves through the USAID project, they brought us a student from Cape Coast University to teach us how important the mangrove is,” said Promise Hunya, the Community Liaison Officer of the Development Action Association.

Experts say mangroves are essential for biodiversity — filtering water, storing carbon and providing shelter for fish and oysters.

Francis K.E. Nunoo, a fisheries professor at the University of Ghana, said mangroves serve a vital role in keeping water sources clean.

But rising seas, stronger storms and warmer waters threaten the trees that families like Nutekpor’s rely on.

Nunoo warns that climate change is putting mangrove communities like this at risk.

He says that there should be an effort to lessen the reliance of coastal populations on fishing in the mangroves.

“The rate of destruction is always higher than the rate of repopulation, so we are going to lose some species and we are going to lose some lives,” he said.

Across West Africa, the danger is growing.

Ghana has lost nearly a quarter of its mangrove cover in the past two decades — and without them, fragile livelihoods are left exposed.