Those who returned (Mataqali Ika kei Vivili sa Cabe Tale Mai)! Marrying indigenous and modern science as a basis for taxonomic assessments of trophic restructuring and species recovery after a decade of marine conservation: a case study of Navakavu Vanua, Viti Levu, Fiji
Randolph Thaman
Time: 11-12 noon
Venue: M107 Lecture Theatre, Marine Campus
The presentation will focus on the changes in species composition and trophic structure that have occurred over the past 50 years within an historically overfished area in Fiji. The findings are based on a comparison of time-depth testimonies of the most knowledgeable older male and female fishers with results from more recent scientific surveys in an effort to correlate observed changes with factors such as intense overfishing, increasing pollution, the 1953 tsunami, climatic change, a decade of marine conservation and the successful establishment of a Marine Protected Areas (MPA).
Analyses of about 700 taxa indicate that the reduction of unsustainable fishing practices such as the use of fish poisons, dynamite fishing, small-mesh gill-netting and the establishment of a successful MPA are largely responsible for the return or increasing abundance and size of a very wide range of fin-fish species, invertebrates, seaweeds and birds, many of which are either being seen for the first time in the lives of today’s older fishers (that is, for the first time in 50 years) or have returned after long absences. As a result of changing environmental baselines and a lack of knowledge among today’s fishers and scientists of what coral reef fisheries used to be like, the marriage of the best indigenous and modern taxonomic knowledge may be the only way of really determining how our efforts at marine conservation are affecting marine biodiversity and the sustainability of the use of the marine environment by local communities.
