Fisheries in the Pacific

Resources, boundaries and gouvernance: What future for marine resources in Micronesia?
Figure 3: Women fishing together with hand nets on Tol Island, 1970s
© Roland Rauchholz.
Most communities in Micronesia have had conservation measures in place, usually
enforced by reef owners who often limited access to the marine areas and resources,
which they owned and controlled. These measures mostly included the closing off of
reef sections for fisheries, normally after the death of a reef owner (pwaaw or mechen
in Chuuk). Religious beliefs, which include ideas about the nature of things, spirit
beings, ancestors and human beings that share the same universe, have had a history
of being a driving force in CMT. People would and today still will mostly avoid the
entrance to closed-off reef sections out of fear of negative repercussions from
community leadership, but above all from the spirit world for possible violations
against the established moral code. One source I interviewed mentioned how on
her island a larger reef section, adjacent to the island, was closed for fishing by the
content despite sufficient funding and subsequent potential for follow up funding. One island community
complained that they were only visited once for 2-3 hours by department specialists in a community
project designed to educate and guide them through a process of establishing and maintaining their own
marine protected area. A private person knowledgeable in environmental science who spent a few days in
the community was able to achieve more without any funding because the community was willing to
learn, but had been left alone by government authorities who did not bother to deliver the work they
were being funded to do. In later reporting though, this community was highlighted as a case for the
government’s success.
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