An authoritative old man wearing a faded purple sarong is directing the half-hearted effort. His complexion matches his faux-leather flying helmet.

He beckons me over and I join two other Westerners, dressed in swimming attire, in assisting the crew. We lean against the bamboo poles as instructed, shoulder to shoulder with the fishermen, and make grunting and heaving sounds to show willing.

Now they manage Mawella Villas in an informal arrangement with the local owner of the two properties, one of colonial vintage, the other modern.

“This is my paradise,” CJ says. “We don’t want to be part of the problem.”

Still absent from most travel guides, Mawella comprises three tiny fishing villages sandwiched between a lagoon and the eastern edge of the Laccadive Sea.

But this unspoilt bay is under threat.

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To counter the threats, resort owners and villagers are uniting to protect the bay, under the auspices of the Mawella Foundation.

“This is a collective effort,” CJ says, “not a highbrow exclusive law but more of a consensus that we don’t want to trash this place.”

The Mawella Foundation, which was formally incorporated in January, was established by Zander Combe, who wanted to involve the community in protecting the beach so all could benefit for years to come.

“This is still a virgin place for tourism,” says Combe, who is the owner of Halcyon Mawella. Recently listed by CNN Traveller the best beach hotel in Sri Lanka, this discreet, low-impact, boutique hotel partially screened behind the spiky green branches of beach-preserving screw pine trees, opened five years ago.

“Some of the locals gave us hell when we first arrived,” Combe says. But when money started to flow into the villages and he began offering jobs and renting houses for staff quarters, attitudes changed.

Sitting under ceiling fans in the hotel’s small restaurant and nursing a pink Halcyon spritzer, Combe says that it used to take two days to get there from the national capital, Colombo, but with the opening of the coastal highway it now takes about three hours by car. Alternatively you can charter a Cinnamon Air seaplane and touch down on nearby Mawella lagoon, where there is a water aerodrome.

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The objective of his foundation is to raise the money to fund projects that enable villagers to benefit from tourism and motivate them to help protect their key economic asset: the beautiful beach.

“I am not really a typical environmentalist but if you pollute the sea and ruin the beach you not only lose fishing, you lose tourism,” Combe says. “It’s just common sense.”

So far, the foundation has employed a beach-cleaning team and is setting up a laundry business, run by local families, to service hotels and villas.

Foundation members have also micro-invested in the village shop and offered the proprietor, MM Chamali, and her daughter, Shashini Kavindi, business advice.

“It was a big change here but we could make a living, so we were happy,” says Shashini, who moved with her mother to be nearer the beach when tourists started arriving in 2015.

They have recently opened guest accommodation, Simplex Sea Place, behind their shop. Now listed on the main booking websites, the property is already receiving positive reviews.

“We need the money to pay for my university tuition,” Shashini says. Perhaps not surprisingly, she intends to study business and commerce.

Just around the corner from the shop is The Cocktails Restaurant and Bar, run by LY Poiyankera “Sana” Sandaruwan, who launched the business five years ago and employs three staff, recruiting his neighbours during busy periods. He recently built four guest rooms and launched a takeaway dining service for those staying in Mawella’s self-catering villas.

“Before I was a fisherman but it was very hard work,” he says. “This is my future now.”

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Another convert is LY Suranga Chamara, who made the switch in 2017, after working for 18 years as a fisherman. He points to his boat, which is lashed to a tree not far from the swimming pool at the Halcyon hotel, and says he used to fish every day but now the inshore boats go out maybe once or twice a month, at most.

“The beach is our gold but some fishermen still don’t understand this,” says Chamara. “Tourism is the future for Mawella beach, not fishing.”

But Mawella’s adversaries are not just climate change and overtourism – it’s also under threat from the Sri Lankan government.

In December 2020, the Ceylon Fishery Harbours Corporation began building a huge stone breakwater at the southern end of Mawella beach, designed to create a harbour for fishing boats.

But the harbour is redundant and critics say the changes to tidal patterns caused by the construction have devastated the coastal fishery, scoured out sand from the beach and accelerated coastal erosion.

“The fishing harbour is a joke,” Chamara says. “It just doesn’t work.”

A petition opposing the scheme has gathered more than 3,500 signatures, including those of most of the villagers, Sri Lankan media has covered the story and fears about corruption driving environmental destruction have been aired.

Combe and fellow beachfront property owners formed the Mawella Tourism Association and commissioned an oceanographic impact assessment, which has warned of a potential catastrophe.

The association obtained a brief audience with Sri Lanka’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and the construction of two further breakwaters has been cancelled, although the campaign to remove the first continues.

Economic survival, rather than lofty sentiment, is the driver of conservation and community tourism here. It may just be that the irreversible tide of mass tourism has not yet reached Mawella. But it feels different to the rest of Sri Lanka’s popular southern coast.

“You can’t halt progress but we can plan for it and protect the beach,” CJ says. “That means collaboration with local villagers.”