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

When I sent the original email to Rick enquiring about obtaining one of these, I thought I would have to send him multiple emails. Apparently, Rick is bit of push over because I received one in less than week of the email. As an exrucker myself (second and scrumhalf), I was obsessed with these…
A little while back I wrote an article about a recent study which largely blamed farmed Tilapia for the loss of native biodiversity in Fijian waterways. I have since received e-mails from Gerald Billings, the Head of Aquaculture at the Ministry of Fisheries and Forests in Fiji. He expressed his…
After 19 hours via London (where I had the unfortunate Sea Cow sighting), I arrived (and felt like I put the 'poo'ped) in Maputo, Mozambique. Tomorrow I deliver a talk to the Mozambique Fisheries Division on the fisheries catch reconstructions I recently completed as part of my Ph.D. research (co-…
Tilapia has quickly risen the ranks as an important aquaculture fish. It's third in production behind carps and salmon, with over 1,500,000 metric tons produced every year. They're ideal fish farm species because they're omnivorous, fairly big, quick-growing, tolerate high densities quite well and…

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. :)