SPC Traditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin #15 – July 2003

ISSN 1025-7497 Secretariat of the Pacific Community TRADITIONAL Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Number 15 — July 2003 INFORMATION BULLETIN Group Coordinator and Bulletin Editor: Kenneth Ruddle, Katsuragi 2-24-20, Kita-ku, Kobe-shi, Hyogo-ken 651-1223, Japan; E-mail: [email protected]]. Production: Information Section, Marine Resources Division, SPC, B.P. D5, 98848 Noumea Cedex, New Caledonia. [Fax: +687 263818; E-mail: [email protected]]. The bulletin is also available at: <http://www.spc.int/coastfish> . Produced with financial assistance from France. Editor’s note Five contributions make up this edition of the Traditional Inside Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin. I am happy that all these articles were unsolicited, and espe- this issue cially because four of them are by graduate students. I wish to encourage both of these trends! A new synthesis in oceanic In “A new synthesis in oceanic domestication: The symbiotic domestication: The symbiotic development of loko i‘a aquaculture in pre-contact Oceania”, development of loko i‘a Kekuewa Kikiloi, a graduate student in the Department of aquaculture in pre-contact Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, exam- Oceania? ines: 1) aquaculture as a dynamic food production system, and by K. Kikiloi 2) the coevolutionary or symbiotic nature of marine procure- p. 3 ment strategies in the oceanic world. Canoes, subsistence and In “Canoes, subsistence and conservation in the Louisiade conservation in the Louisiade Archipelago of Papua New Guinea”, Mark Smaalders and Jeff Archipelago of Papua New Kinch examine in detail the construction and use of traditional Guinea sailing canoes, together with the economic and social roles. by M. Smaalders and J. Kinch p. 11 The authors also discuss the replacement of canoes by motorised dinghies, and the potential implications this has for The coexistence of whaling and marine resource use and management. whale watching in a traditional whaling region: The case of Taiji, In “The coexistence of whaling and whale watching in a tradi- Wakayama Prefecture, Japan tional whaling region: The case of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, by S. Segi p. 21 Japan”, Shio Segi, a graduate student in the School of Policy Studies at Kwansei Gakuin University, examines efforts to The merging of archaelogical develop a new industry in a declining rural region in western evidence and marine turtle Japan. Mr Segi seeks to understand why a whale watching ecology: A case study approach industry has not developed in traditional whaling communi- to the importance of including ties in Japan, in an attempt to stimulate local economies devas- archaelogical data in marine tated by the whaling ban. He examines the processes and fac- science tors regarding the coexistence of whale watching and whaling by R. Woodrom-Luna p. 26 in the wider area of southern Wakayama Prefecture, and the application to other whaling communities. MARINE RESOURCES DIVISION – INFORMATION SECTION 2 SPC Traditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin #15 – July 2003 We also have two articles on marine turtles by Regina Traditional food prohibitions Woodrom-Luna, who is also a graduate student in the (tapu) on marine turtles among Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Pacific Islanders Manoa. In the first, “The merging of archaeological evidence and marine turtle ecology: A case study approach to the by R. Woodrom-Luna p. 31 importance of including archaeological data in marine sci- Studies, Workshops, Meetings ence”, she summarises the results of an initial examination of and New Publications archaeological evidence on marine turtles from the Pacific Islands and looks specifically at prehistoric Pacific Islander use p. 33 of and impact on marine turtle populations. In a second article, “Traditional food prohibitions (tapu) regarding marine turtles among Pacific Islanders”, Ms Woodrom-Luna examines traditional “laws”, many of which represent indigenous conservation measures that protected turtles. Kenneth Ruddle SPCTraditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge InformationON-LINE Bulletin Past issues of this bulletin, as well as many other publications from the SPC Coastal Fisheries Programme, are now available on SPC’s website at: http://www.spc.int/coastfish/ or http://www.sidsnet.org/pacific/spc/coastfish/ Go to “Publications” to find the Traditional and other information bulletins, as well as other recent SPC Marine Resources Division publications PIMRIS is a joint project of five internation- is to improve the availability of information al organisations concerned with fisheries on marine resources to users in the region, and marine resource development in the so as to support their rational development Pacific Islands region. The project is execut- and management. PIMRIS activities ed by the Secretariat of the Pacific include: the active collection, cataloguing Community (SPC), the South Pacific Forum and archiving of technical documents, espe- Fisheries Agency (FFA), the University of cially ephemera (“grey literature”); evalua- the South Pacific (USP), the South Pacific tion, repackaging and dissemination of Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), information; provision of literature search- and the South Pacific Regional es, question-and-answer services and bibli- Environment Programme (SPREP). This ographic support; and assistance with the bulletin is produced by SPC as part of its Pacific Islands Marine Resources development of in-country reference collec- commitment to PIMRIS. The aim of PIMRIS Information System tions and databases on marine resources. SPC Traditional Marine Resource Management and Knowledge Information Bulletin #15 – July 2003 3 A new synthesis in oceanic domestication: The symbiotic development of loko i‘a aquaculture in pre-contact Oceania Kekuewa Kikiloi1 Introduction they inhabited has been the focus of many recent archaeological studies. The historical ecological Oceania comprises more than 30 per cent of the paradigm has come to dominate theories on earth’s surface, and is where some of the world’s human arrival in seemingly “pristine” island envi- richest aquatic resources are found. The islands in ronments, relying heavily on the assumption that this region provide an ideal setting for investigat- these natural island ecosystems were stable and ing questions of domestication as a biological pro- unchanging before the advent of humans in the cess between fauna and humans. From an evolu- region. On entering previously unoccupied “pris- tionary framework, the operation of natural selec- tine” island ecosystems, indigenous people initiat- tion and evolution can be seen in many examples ed a series of changes that reshaped the physical of cultural practices throughout Oceania. Within landscape, drastically altered vegetation regimes, Oceania, a combination of food-production tech- and transformed both the composition and distri- nologies and strategies of domestication arose bution of island faunas. Environmental distur- owing to the limited amount of arable land and rel- bances such as forest clearing and exploitation of atively impoverished terrestrial faunal resources. wild food sources led to dramatic transformations of the ‘aina (Kirch 1983). In the research reported on here, I examine both aquaculture as a dynamic food production system But in this article I focus on the surrounding kai and the coevolutionary or symbiotic nature of associated with these islands, because the expan- marine procurement strategies in the oceanic sive seascape in remote Oceania comprises more world. My objective in this research is to expand than 65 per cent of the geographical area. The conventional views of domestication, by adopting ocean itself has greater potential in addressing a broader definition of this biological process and these issues because it is not restricted by size, outlining the various components that comprise form and diversity in resources. Thus the ocean this relationship. During the development of this provides a neutral testing ground for hypotheses relationship, humans must acquire control and that specify the relationship between humans and management of four different aspects of the pro- their environments. duction system: protection, growth, reproduction and harvesting. This requires a sophisticated The fundamental goal of evolutionary theory is to understanding of species types and of coastal zone explain the common threads underlying life’s habitats, considering the amount of variation in diversity. Evolution seeks to explain the unity and oceanic ecosystems throughout the archipelagos in diversity in life, and natural selection is the major Oceania, and reflects the interrelationship these “editing mechanism” that dictates this change. indigenous peoples had with biological species of Natural selection occurs as heritable variations are the ‘aina (land) and the kai (sea). As this control exposed to environmental factors that favour the increases, the relationship has the potential to reproductive success of some individuals with cer- become the equivalent to food production and tain variants over others. Each species develops its domestication. Not all food production systems in own set of adaptations, or features, that evolved Oceania necessarily controlled all four compo- by means of this selection process. This theme is nents, and various activities were done in relation the cornerstone of understanding life. to the marine environment. Coevolution

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