Brown Pulu, TeenaAmoamo, RewiMeredith, NikolaseTonga, Sylvester2026-04-302026-04-302026-05-30Visual Studies, ISSN: 1472-586X (Print); 1472-5878 (Online), Taylor and Francis Group, 1-11. doi: 10.1080/1472586X.2026.26566901472-586X1472-5878http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21006In response to the socio-economic pressures of climate change, seen locally in declining inshore fisheries and deteriorating coral reefs, forty-nine coastal villages across the small island nation of Tonga have established community-managed marine protected areas to regulate fishing and sustain marine life. This visual essay offers behind-the-scenes reflections on creating short documentaries with and for the coastal villages of Tefisi and Makave in the Vava’u Islands of northern Tonga. Told from the perspectives of New Zealand–Tongan production crew members Rewi Amoamo and Nikolase Meredith, with contributions from their interviewer, Sylvester Tonga, the essay shares their storytelling alongside photographs that show how they made sense of sea borders through their interactions and collaborations with these coastal communities. The pictorial work centres on marine zoning practices that divide village coastlines into restricted fishing areas and no-take zones, boundaries that, on the water, are invisible and marked only by the occasional buoy. Twelve photographs capture the embodied experience of filming with fishers and fisheries officers within their shifting seascapes, where the borders of the ocean are both real and imagined.© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.451312 Pacific Peoples media, film, animation and photography451599 Pacific Peoples environmental knowledges not elsewhere classified451807 Pacific Peoples community-based research451317 Pacific Peoples research methods451307 Pacific Peoples ethicsJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1080/1472586X.2026.2656690