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A workshop on the assessment of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus). with the Solomon Islands as a case study, took place from 21-23 August 2008 in Apia. Samoa. It was planned and organized under the auspices of the Cetacean Specialist Group and attended by 19 invited participants from eight countries. Financial support was provided by WWF (International). The Ocean Conservancy. Animal Welfare Institute. Humane Society of the United States. Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. U.S. Marine Mammal Commission and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The workshop was hosted by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

Reflecting their concern and that of the community representatives who participated in the survey, the survey team has offered a range of recommendations for the conservation and sustainable use of the globally, nationally and locally important marine habitats and resources in the Solomon Islands. These include specific recommendations for the establishment of networks of locally managed marine areas, the management of critically important reef fisheries, the protection of key habitats (coral reefs, seagrasses and mangroves), and the conservation of oceanic cetaceans and associated habitats.

This proposal will provide the scientific basis to support sustainable management of the Marovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, while maximising use of local marine resources for the benefit of local communities. The health of coastal marine ecosystems in the Marovo lagoon, like many sites around the world, are at risk due to inappropriate land use adjacent to coastal rivers and the lagoon (FAO 1994; Umali etal. 1987; WWF 1999a & b; World Bank 2000). Mangrove, seagrass and coral habitats provide the basis of most food chains in tropical regions; hence any deterioration in the condition or health of these habitats will lead to significant losses in both physical and functional benefits derived from these coastal ecosystems. Both intentional (wetland reclamation, point source pollution discharge, destructive fishing practices) and unintentional (increased run-off due to clearing, non-point source pollutant release) anthropogenic activities can lead to serious degradation of these important habitats and lead to a reduction in productivity of the ecosystem.

Solomon Islands is one of the seven countries of the South West Pacific Node of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN). The country coordination is carried out by the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) Gizo Office in the Western Province. All coral reef monitoring activities are carried out by WWF Gizo staff with very little interaction with other stakeholders in way of information sharing.

Information currently available from Solomon Islands on blacklip pearl oysters(Pinctada margaritifera) and their potential culture comes from three main sources; records of past exploitation, occasional resource surveys that have included blacklip pearl oysters; and research on culture of blacklip oysters in Solomon Islands. Statistics on past exploitation are limited to export tonnage and value collected by the Statistics Unit of the Ministry for Fisheries and Marine Resources. Spatially resolved data from within the country, by island or by island group are not available. However, since export appears to have been through a single point. Honiara, these records are likely to reasonably accurately reflect the tonnage exported. Of the various resource assessments that have been undertaken the only recent, nationwide one that we are aware of is that coordinated and funded by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in May- June 2004. All of the information on pearl farming in Solomon Islands is derived from a research project carried out in the period 1993-1997 by the WorldFish Center (previously the International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management - ICLARM) in collaboration with MFMR and funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). After 1997. through to the present. WorldFish continued research on blacklip pearl production, supported through its own funds, albeit at a reduced level.

The sites at Sandfly in Gela, Central Province were established over a three year period (three sites in 2004, two sites in 2005 and one site in 2007) after a series of workshops on good governance and marine resource awareness raising under the coral gardens project which was implemented by SIDT, ECANSI and Fisheries Division of the Solomon Islands government with funding from SPREP through FSPI. The sites are all community owned although two of them are owned and operated by resort owners who are indigenous residents of Gela

Solomon Islanders rely heavily on marine resources and have one of the highest per capita rates of seafood consumption in the world. In 1982, the national average annual consumption of fish per person was estimated to be 25.7 kg, ranging from 10 kg in rural Guadalcanal and San Cristobal, to 54 kg in the Western Province (Cook, 1988). Another survey conducted in Honiara in 1992, found that 31 per cent of households consumed fresh fish each day and that 82.4 per cent of meals containing animal protein were based on fish. The annual per capita consumption of fish was estimated to be 45.5 kg, comprising 36.7 per cent fresh fish, 31.0 per cent frozen fish and 32.3 percent canned fish (Crossland & Phihpson, 1993).

Solomon Islands consists of many islands extending over 1,400 kilometers of ocean in the western equatorial Pacific between 5 and 13 degrees south and 155 and 158 degrees east. It has an estimated total land area of 29,000 square kilometers, a 12 mile territorial sea and approximately 1.3 million square kilometers of ocean within its 200 mile exclusive economic zone. The total coastline has been estimated to be 4,023 kilometers long. The islands have little or no continental shelf area but support some of the world's largest lagoons and extensive fringing and barrier coral reefs.

The International Waters Project (IWP)1 is a 7-year, USD 12 million initiative concerned with management and conservation of marine, coastal and freshwater resources in the Pacific islands region, and is specifically intended to address the root causes of environmental degradation related to trans-boundary issues in the Pacific. The project includes two components: an integrated coastal and watershed management component, and an oceanic fisheries management component (the latter has been managed as a separate project). It is financed by the Global Environment Facility under its International Waters Programme. The coastal component is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme and executed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), in the conjunction with the governments of the 14 independent Pacific Island countries: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nine, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. The coastal component supports national and community-level actions2 that address priority environmental concerns relating to marine and fresh water quality, habitat modification and degradation and unsustainable use of living marine resources through a 7-year phase of pilot activities, which Started in 2000 and will conclude at the end of 2006.