What Can You Deduce from a Chair?

FijiChair.JPGThis is the chair of one officer in Fiji's National Fisheries Division. Dr. Daniel Pauly was one of the first scientists to address the wide divide between fisheries science in the North and the South. In a 1994 essay on this topic, he wrote, "...those working with the management of tropical resources are forced to consider rural poverty...as a key variable affecting fisheries. This often widespread poverty seriously limits the range of acceptable options for management." But as you can see by this chair, the options for management were limited anyway.

That said, Fiji seems to have a decent model for traditional management of coral reef fisheries. Village chiefs are responsible for overseeing I qoliqolis (traditional fishing grounds), of which there are 410 scattered throughout the Fijian Islands and rights to fish in each are fairly exclusive. The national government works with provincial councils who then communicate decisions to village chiefs. Things like size limits do not seem to be adequately enforced but MPAs, for instance, are.

More like this

I wouldn't deduce TOO much about the divide between North and South from that chair. I used to work for DFO, and much of the office furniture at the Pacific Biological Station wasn't TOO far off from that! Compare that to people we all hear of in the computer software industry, who are so well-paid that they can demand a desk made of lego. :)