Present Day Consumption of Edible Algae in French Polynesia: A Study of the Survival of Pre-European Practices

The study of contemporary algae consumption in several islands of the Marquesas and Austral archipelagoes documents a little-known practice in French Polynesia. It provides information about some aspects of ancient Polynesian diet. It is, we will argue, a survival. This poses intriguing comparative questions both for other islands of French Polynesia and for Hawai'i, especially in the historical as well as pre-European periods. In an earlier article (Conte and Payri 2002), we discussed initial findings regarding consumption of edible algae from a survey conducted mainly in Ua Huka Island in the Marquesas, French Polynesia (Fig. 1). In the conclusion we emphasised the need to continue ethnographic data collection of algae consumption, an ever-dwindling practice, before such information becames too scant or the practice died out altogether. To ensure this did not remain simply wishful thinking, we have continued conducting surveys alone or with the help of collaborators in several French Polynesian islands where algae are still eaten. The consumption of algae has not been well documented in the region that we have studied, neither for recent nor pre-contact times. The absence of accounts on this subject by the first Europeans makes it difficult to judge whether this practice was more developed in times past than today, although this is a possibility. However, the level of consumption of algae would never have reached the same importance in French Polynesia that it did in other Polynesian archipelagos such as Hawai'i, where it is still high.