Fisheries in the Pacific

Socioeconomic significance of fisheries in the Small Island Developing States…
which includes one of the this chapter’s authors, Tamatoa Bambridge. Our point was
that, while coastal communities’ concerns and fisheries scientists’ concerns are not
necessarily incompatible, the former are sidelined in international debates and fora
despite these communities’ long history of sustainable fisheries management and
their current interest in being active in the implementation of fisheries management
and conservation, rather than just in consultation processes.
Finally, in Oceanian tradition, there has never been a contradiction between fish
as a commodity (defined as an object of exchange) and fish as a cultural and natural
heritage. What changed in the 20 th century was that Pacific fish gained an economic
importance far beyond the Pacific world, which changed their global economic
relevance both in scale and intensity. This challenged the local pluralistic value
assigned to fish in the Pacific Islands. The decimation of the Atlantic fishery to the
point of non-sustainability has changed global perceptions of the need to control
fisheries exploitation. Such control requires the cooperation of all parties in a system
essentially based on voluntary compliance in the absence of effective monitoring
and policing of the vast offshore expanses of the Pacific Ocean (Grafton et al. 2006).
Pacific societies are now taking the lead in reconceptualising fisheries as pluralistic
objects with environmental, economic, social, and cultural issues to be considered in
any management regime at local, national, regional and global levels. The already
mentioned effective use of traditional means of fishery regulation and conservation
known as a rahui at Hotopua in Teahupoo (French Polynesia), a culturally sacred
site for all Eastern Polynesians, has much wider application. The vital importance of
emphasizing the economic, social, cultural and environmental value of fish in
combination goes far beyond the Oceanian world.
References
Alkire, William H.
1965 Lamotrek Atoll and Inter-Island Socioeconomic Ties. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press.
1968 “Porpoises and Taro”. Ethnology, 7(3): 280-289.
Allain, Valérie, Julie-Anne Kerandel, Serge Andréfouët, Franck Magron, Malcolm Clark,
David Kirby, and Frank Muller-Karger
2008 “Enhanced Seamount Location Database for the Western and Central Pacific Ocean:
Screening and Cross-Checking of 20 Existing Datasets”. Deep-Sea Research Part I:
Oceanographic Research Papers, 55(8): 1035-1047.
Almany, Glenn, Richard Hamilton, Michael Bode, Manuai Matawai, Tapas Potuku,
Pablo Saenz-Agudelo, Serge Planes, Michael Berumen, Kevin Rhodes, Simon Thorrold, Garry Russ,
and Geoffrey Jones
2013 “Dispersal of Grouper Larvae Drives Local Resource Sharing in a Coral Reef Fishery”.
Current Biology, 23(7): 626-630.
191