The Darawa community in the Wakatobi National Park, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, manages their octopus fishery by working tirelessly with community-based organizations. It was a beautiful and sunny Sunday. The Darawa village community in the Wakatobi National Park, in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi, was preparing to celebrate. The occasion was the first opening of Fulua Nto’oge, the 50 ha fishing site off One Mbiha beach which had been closed for three months. White steam billowed from four large cooking pots, stacked neatly over the fires. There were intoxicating aromas of lapa-lapa (rice cakes wrapped in coconut leaves) and seafood stews made from the most recent catch of crabs, squid, clams and snappers. Darawa village is a community of 775 people, 105 of them are octopus fishers. The members of the community largely rely on the ocean for their livelihoods through octopus fishing or seaweed farming. For fishers, temporary fishery closures serve to give the octopus time to increase in size and reproduce, generating larger and more profitable catches and improved livelihoods. This management method has been quite successful in the Western Indian Ocean because the life cycle of an octopus is short.