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Knowledge of the fishermen of Tarawa Atoll, Kiribati concerning some key food fish in their waters is described and shown to be highly relevant to the management of these fish. The bonefish, AZbula glossodonta, has been the most important shallowwater finfish in Tarawa catches. However, all but one of its known spawning runs has been eliminated according to fishermen and this last remaining run is showing signs of severe depletion. Traditional marine resources management measures, some conservation-driven and others with different objectives, were diverse. But they have largely disappeared due, in part at least, to the impacts of British colonial rule. Reestablishing some form of local marine tenure seems essential to sound marine resource management, although the difficulties that would be encountered in doing so are not trivial.

Wallis and Futuna Islands make up one of the three French overseas territories in the Pacific. They are located 2000 km north of New Caledonia and 3500 km northwest of Tahiti. The territory comprises two distinct archipelagoes situated 240 km apart: the Wallis Islands and the Horn Archipelago composed of Futuna and Alofi. The Wallis Islands are made up of the main island Uvea and 19 islets scattered throughout a lagoon which is 24 km long and 15 km wide. Futuna is high island without a lagoon and with a few areas of cliffs, surrounded by a fringing reef of varying width. Separated from Futuna by a channel of 1800 m width, Alofi is a high volcanic island surrounded by a variably developed fringing reef. The surface area of land is small (215 km2) and coral reefs occupy about 300 km2 ; immerged reefs are found to the north of Wallis Island. The Exclusive Economic Zone of the territory covers 300,000 km2.

Helen Reef in the Southwest Islands of Palau is the one of the greatest marine assets of the Hatohobei (Tobi) People and of the Republic of Palau. Helen Reef is known as one of the most biologically diverse coral reef atolls in the Pacific and historically one of the most biologically abundant reefs in Palau,including acclaimed populations of plentiful marine resources including, trochus, turtles, sea cucumbers, seabirds, and many large reef fish. Reflected in its traditional Hatohobeian name Hotsarihie, which signifies “Reef of the Giant Clam”, Helen Reef is perhaps most famous in the region for its once ubiquitous giant clams, and unfortunately the unchecked foreign poaching that has occurred there over the past decades. The richness and abundance of the atoll’s resources are factors of its location, being remote from human populations and bordering the biodiverse marine eco-regions of Melanesia and SE Asia. The cumulative characteristics of the atoll have attracted many users over time including subsistence fishers from Hatohobei and neighboring islands, sea-faring traders, local businesses interests, and foreign commercial resource operations. The remoteness of Helen Reef which contributes to its historical levels of resource abundance is also a underlying cause for recent resource declines, as the atoll is usually uninhabited and has been notably vulnerable to poaching for the last half century by foreign fishermen from Asian countries

The very productive lagoon fisheries of Tarawa atoll changed greatly in recent decades as human development and intensive harvesting increased. Tarawa typifies the increasingly common condition of resource depletion and marine community structure change with expanding human activities and population growth. Fisheries-dependent reports have documented the change in fisher landings for nearly two decades. A comparison of fisheries-independent data collected during 1992-93 with data collected in 1977 allowed for documentation of large changes in important finfish resources in Tarawa Lagoon. The historically important bonefish (Albula glossodonta), like other important fishery species, demonstrated declines in catch-per-unit effort (CPUE), proportion of catch, mean length and weight (1977: 46.4 cm, 1.31 kg; 1992-93: 37.6 cm and 0.84 kg), and sex ratio (1977: 0.71:1 [F:M]; 1992-93: 0.15:1). Beach seine sampling of bait fishes demonstrated a major shift in species composition between 1977 and 1992- 93, with severe depletion of some preferred species. These results suggest declining abundance in locally important fish species and large changes in species composition within Tarawa Lagoon.

The lagoon of Tarawa harbors the richest benthos documented for any Pacific atoll. The biota is strongly influenced by its setting in the equatorial upwelling zone and the unusual geomorphology of the atoll, with a submerged western rim, but largely closed and islet-strewn eastern and southern sides. As the metropolitan center of the Republic of Kiribati, Tarawa also has the largest human population of any Pacific atoll. These three attributes impose a strong influence on all aspects of the lagoon. The high regional productivity supports unusually high population densities of heterotrophic mollusks and irregular echinoids for an "open" atoll. The dense human population on the atoll relics largely on marine resources for its protein needs. The lagoonal sand flat harbors dense and diverse mollusk communities, particularly in seagrass beds. These communities support an intensive subsistence fishery with an annual harvest of ca. 1,000 tons in South Tarawa. Much of the available biomass of the two preferred species, the blood cockle Anadara uropigimelana (te bun) and the small conch Strombus luhuanus (te nouo), is taken. Both the seagrass and shellfish beds appear to have expanded considerably in the past 50 years, likely as a result of nutrient enrichment from the rapidly growing human population. Dense mollusk communities along the southeastern lagoon slope at 2-8 m depth support an intensive commercial fishery that harvests approximately 1,000 tons of Anadara per year, again representing much of the available production. Three species of irregular echinoids are conspicuously abundant on the floor of the eastern lagoon, with combined densities > 100 m-2 in the muddy facies of the inner lagoon. All aspects of the benthos follow a marked west-to-east and north-to-south zonation, reflecting the one-sided exchange of oceanic waters along the western atoll rim. While mollusk and echinoid biomass increases southeastward, coral diversity and cover decreases in that direction.

Knowledge of the fishermen of Tarawa Atoll, Kiribati concerning some key food fish in their waters is described and shown to be highly relevant to the management of these fish. The bonefish, Albula glossodonta, has been the most important shallow- water finfish in Tarawa catches. However, all but one of its known spawning runs has been eliminated according to fishermen and this last remaining run is showing signs of severe depletion. Traditional marine resources management measures, some conservation-driven and others with different objectives, were diverse. But they have largely disappeared due, in part at least, to the impacts of British colonial rule. Reestablishing some form of local marine tenure seems essential to sound marine resource management, although the difficulties that would be encountered in doing so are not trivial.

In 1998, the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), organised a training workshop in Community-based Ecotourism for Conservation Areas. The workshop was held at Lonnoc Resort (Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu). The 1998 workshop was attended mainly by representatives from the Conservation Area projects supported by the South Pacific Biodiversity Conservation Programme (SPBCP), plus six Melanesian focal points for marine and coral reef conservation.