Fisheries in the Pacific

The Authors
Valérie ALLAIN is a fisheries research scientist at the Pacific Community (SPC). Her
domains of expertise include fish biology and ecology, ecosystem functioning,
fisheries, and climate change impact. After studying the deep sea fish populations
exploited by trawl fisheries in the north-east Atlantic, she moved to the Pacific where
she has spent the last 15 years working on the tuna fisheries of the Western and
Central Pacific Ocean. Her work has particularly focused on understanding the tuna
ecosystem through studies of the trophic interactions between fish species as well as
an analysis of the various compartments of this ecosystem, from primary producers
to top predators. She has also studied the impact of seamounts on tuna catches, tuna
fisheries by catches, and tuna movement and ecosystem organization through
biological markers such as mercury and stable isotopes. Her recent publications
include several co-authored articles in specialised journals, such as Deep Sea Research
Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography (Volume 113, 2015), and in multidisciplinary
scientific journals, such as PLoS ONE (Volume 7(5), 2012) and Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science US (Volume 107(21), 2010). They also include contributions
to SPC’s publications on various topics, for instance the vulnerability of open
ocean food webs to climate change in the tropical Pacific (Chapter 4 in Vulnerability
of Tropical Pacific Fisheries and Aquaculture to Climate Change, edited by J.D. Bell, J.E.
Johnson and A.J. Hobday, 2011, http://www.spc.int/climate-change/fisheries/assessment/main-book.html).
Tamatoa BAMBRIDGE is an anthropologist and CNRS (French National Centre for
Scientific Research) Senior Researcher at CRIOBE, Centre de Recherches Insulaires
et Observatoire de l’Environnement, Moorea, French Polynesia. His research focuses
on the relations between society and environment in Eastern Polynesia, in particular
on traditional Polynesian management of the land and the sea. He recently published
Rahui in Polynesia. Legal Pluralism in Environmental Management (2015, ANU Press).
Sarah BERNARD holds a Master of Environmental Anthropology from the French
National Museum of Natural History as well as a master’s degree from the College
of International Agro-Development (ISTOM). In 2014, she spent six months in
New Caledonia as an intern at IRD (Research Institute for Development) and GIE
Oceanide (an economic interest group offering expertise in territory development in
ocean and island environments) in Noumea.
Samuel CORNIER holds a degree in marine engineering (SeaTech, Toulon, France)
and a Master of Physical and Coastal Oceanography (COM, Marseille, France). In
2006 he started ethnographic research in New Caledonia on Kanak traditional
Fisheries in the Pacific. The challenges of governance and sustainability – Cahiers du Credo – 2016 283