Fisheries experts from around the Pacific are meeting this week in New Caledonia to co-ordinate community-based programmes for managing the region's coastal fisheries.
The coastal fisheries are vitally important for food supply and income generation but they are under threat from activities such as illegal, unregulated fishing by distant water nations
The director of the coastal fisheries and aquaculture programme at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Lindsay Chapman, says attempts to use Western approaches to fisheries management, have failed.
Fish being sold at a Solomon Islands food market. Photo: RNZ
Mr Chapman says they want the marine scientists, natural resource managers, researchers, community fishers and NGOs to look at uniting the hundreds of community schemes.
"We have got all of these pilot sites, [so] how can we actually look at this and take it to the next level and move up, upscale it to a national approach, or a sub national approach, and move away from these individual little pilot sites all over the place."
The SPC's Lindsay Chapman
