Mosese Vesikara and his uncle, Kinikoto Mailautoka, are on the reef collecting sea urchins for lunch. Beneath the boat, the swelling water is clear despite how close Fiji’s lively capital, Suva, is. When out collecting, Vesikara and the other fishers carefully go around the tabu — pronounced TAM-bo — a no-fishing zone marked by pillars stuck into the reef floor.
These tabus are one way that Fijian communities manage their resources. Reintroduced to these waters after decades without them, they represent a return to traditional methods of reef and fishery management. The hope is that this traditional wisdom, combined with modern science, can enable the growing village populations to subsist off the qoliqoli — fishing grounds — as they have for thousands of years.
Fisheries in crisis
Schools of electric blue fish swim through the twinkling coral reef below Vesikara’s boat. The reef was not always so healthy. In the late 1990s, throughout Fiji and across the Pacific, fisheries hit a crisis point. Colonial management methods stressed centralization, and commercial exploitation had overseen a decline in fish numbers.
“The fish were getting too small. The coral were dead because of the plastic pollution from Suva and the oil from boats,” says Hemo Marvela, chairman of this marine protection area. “You know the generation coming up. That’s why we want to protect them. That’s the only reason.” As a result, traditional community management techniques began to become popular again. The responsibility for monitoring the health of the qoliqoli was returned to the local communities that lived off them.
Sacred reefs
Austin Bowden-Kerby, a marine scientist who has spent his career in coral conservation in the Pacific and in Central America, recalls how the idea of tabus was brought up during a community consultation. “There is one thing our grandfathers used to do that we haven’t been doing — we would make a tabu area. We will mark the reef with sticks and a coconut leaf tied on it. And that means you cannot catch anything on that reef. That makes it sacred. For 40 or 50 years this had not been practised.”
In Fijian tradition, a tabu is the temporary closure of a section of a community’s fishing ground for 100 days after a chief’s death, before a memorial feast is held. The idea of the modern tabu is to extend that closure indefinitely. And so, from this consultation, a pilot of five permanent no-fishing areas began. “They said, ‘We are going to re-establish our culture,’” Bowden-Kerby says.
News of the increased catches that resulted from the tabus spread from village to village. Today, Fiji has a network of 400 communities known as the Fiji Locally Managed Marine Areas (FLMMAs), which use traditional management techniques that have often been ignored for decades.
Problems with poachers
Marvela is chair of a four-person committee that governs the Navakavu reef through the traditional chiefly system. He says the reef is in good health, but there are still problems — poachers, in particular. “They come at night — always at night. These people are very smart, but it’s unfair.”
The committee responsible for governing the reef’s use struggles to monitor it. They had a boat to guard against poachers, but it was stolen years ago. Marvela is frustrated enough that he is looking to make Navakavu reef an official marine protected area. This means the police can be called on to stop poachers. But it would also mean the government in Suva would again be managing their qoliqoli.
An alluring payoff
Back at the village, Vesikara and Mailautoka take out the sea urchins and eat them with sliced chilli and some lemon. “These would cost about $25 each down at Suva market,” Mailautoka says. With such a payoff, the allure — and risk — of poaching is obvious, and a change in global tastes could mean ruin for the qoliqoli.
Sea cucumbers, which clean and aerate the sands, have already been fished to near extinction to satisfy the Asian market. Yet traditional wisdom backed up by modern science could provide a defence to encroaching risks. Perhaps then the lunch pot might be full for the next generation.
© Guardian News & Media 2020