Fisheries Newsletter No 149 (January–April 2016)

Editorial

The collection of fisheries data remains a major challenge for fisheries officers in Pacific Island countries, especially in remote outer islands. Noting the rapid increase in Internet availability throughout the region, SPC has addressed the issue of data collection through the development of a new mobile phone and tablet application that will facilitate the collection of data from small-scale fishers, and ease the transfer of this information from outer islands to central fisheries offices (link to article). This new app will also reduce the time lag between data collection and data processing, which is critical for proper and timely assessments of fish stocks. It will be interesting to see how quickly fisheries officers adopt this new tool.

In the Pacific Islands region, aquaculture may only become economically viable when natural stocks of certain fish and invertebrates are so depleted that their market value “goes through the ceiling”. For sandfish, the highest-valued and largely overexploited tropical sea cucumber (link to article), the time for commercially viable aquaculture may have come. Public and private sandfish farming experiments are taking place in several countries, including Kiribati (link to article). It is strange to think that successful aquaculture may sometimes be the result of weak fishery management.

The word data is cited more than 100 times in this issue, which is not surprising for a newsletter dedicated to fisheries, but this may be a sign that the attention of Fisheries Newsletter contributors – and readers – is increasingly focusing on management concerns.

Aymeric Desurmont
Fisheries Information Specialist