Na Vuku Makawa ni Qoli: Indigenous Fishing Knowledge (IFK) in Fiji and the Pacific

The time-tested indigenous fishing knowledge (IFK) of the Pacific Islands is seriously threatened due to the commercialization of fishing, the breakdown of traditional communal leadership and oral knowledge transmission systems, modern education and the movement of the younger generations to urban areas for work and/or study. As a consequence, IFK, which has been orally transmitted for generations, has been lost, not learned by the current generation, or remains undocumented. This desktop study focuses on the critical need for conserving and including IFK as a basis for assessing the conservation status of ecologically and culturally important keystone fisheries species as a basis for planning and site-specific management of marine and freshwater fisheries in Fiji and the Pacific Islands. The study reviews information on IFK from Fiji and elsewhere in the small oceanic islands of the Pacific as a basis for the conservation, documentation and intergenerational transfer of this knowledge as the foundation for sustainable fisheries management in these nations. The study spanned over documents from the last two and a half centuries. The results include a review of the nature and conservation status of IFK and the conservation status of species considered to be of particular ecological and cultural importance, reasons for the loss of species/taxa and associated knowledge and practices, and actions that need to be taken to address this loss. Moreover, it also highlights ways to counter the erosion of the threatened IFK so that the future generations can have access to it.