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In the past two years the local communities on Rarotonga, Cook Islands, have tried to stop islanders from fishing in some coral reefs areas by creating traditional no-fishing zones, known to the locals as Ra’ui. The Ra’ui primarily protects the reef from many people walking and collecting shellfish, octopus, and other organisms, and therefore helps restock the lagoon fish. Locals want to maintain the restricted areas for conservation purposes.

Marine resources report prepared for the Samoa's National Report for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 2002.

Nauru is a single island country situated in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean, about 60 km south of the equator, at latitude 0°31’S and longitude 166° 55’E. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba also known as Ocean Island in the Republic of Kiribati, about 300 km to the east. Sydney is about 4000 km to the south, Tokyo, some 4800 km to the north west and Honolulu about 4200 km to the north east. Nauru is an ancient submerged volcano with a karstified limestone cap of coral origin about 550m thick (Hill and Jacobson 1989), measuring 6 km long by 4 km wide with a circumference of 18 km and a total land area of 21 km2. The central plateau forms about 80% of the island with the highest point to 70 m above sea level. The remaining land area is composed of a flat coastal terrace measuring 300 1000 m wide and with a mean elevation of about 3m above sea level. The shallow intertidal fringing reef measures 110-320 m in width, and sloping 45° angle to the ocean floor to a 4000 m depth. Dalzell & Debao (1994) estimated that the total intertidal reef area down to the 200 m isobaths measures 7.4 km2.

In 1993 a study of coastal villages in Vanuatu revealed that within the previous three years there had been a rapid increase in marine resource management (MRM) activities. The initial impetus for these events was the Vanuatu Fisheries Department's promotion of a voluntary, village-based trochus management programme. Initially the programme involved only a few fishing villages out of a total of several hundred. The Department surveyed their community trochus stocks, advised the people that regular several-year closures of their trochus fishery, followed by brief openings, would generate far more profit than the usual practice of harvesting continually. They left it to the villagers to decide whether or not to act on this advice.

Developed in 1994, the NEMS highlights strategies for the development of policy and planning mechanisms for sustainable development, human resource management, pollution control, education and information, preservation of cultural, archaeological and historical resources, and recommendations for long-term sustainable management plans for tourism development, marine resources protection, and agriculture.

The 2002 State of the Environment Report is divided into four sections: Marine Resources, Terrestrial Resources, Air and Water Resources, and Environmental Issues facing American Samoa. At the beginning of each topic is a box containing a "letter grade" followed by an upward ( ) or downward ( ) facing arrow indicating the topic's trend.

This discussion will cover the topics listed below, with the aim of explaining, in simple terms, the complex organisation of coral reef ecosystems. The central theme is the inter-relationship between various components of the coral reef ecosystem and the way in which a change in one component may manifest changes in other components. Specifically, inter-relationships are explained in terms of a selective extractive activity such as that associated with the marine ornamental trade. Where possible, examples are drawn from organisms that are currently collected for the trade.