Small-scale fisheries across the Pacific, particularly in Vanuatu, are multi-species, multi-geared, and span multiple coastal habitats. This diversity and variability extends into associated trade and distribution systems that move fish from relatively few landing sites to broad consumer bases in rural and urban areas. However, little is known about the domestic trade of fish at a national scale, as fish move through connected informal economies that are made up of networks of community and market actors. To help address this gap, this study maps the structure and function of the market systems that coastal fisheries in Vanuatu feed into, and does so by characterizing dimensions of supply, trade and distribution dynamics, and market organization. A framework for mapping fish trade networks is proposed and applied to understand dynamics and variability in the way fish transit. The study sheds light on key areas including the spatial and temporal variation in the distribution of different types of fish, and the considerable dynamism of the fish market system in relation to disruptions. Harnessing domestic trade stands to improve sustainable management, considering its driving role behind fishing as well as people’s access to fish. A baseline understanding of trade and distribution can critically support fisheries management authorities to achieve their ambitions to more effectively respond to challenges in improving production, fish storage, and connectivity between fishers and consumers.

Context The sustainable supply of fish in the face of climate change and other drivers of change is a policy priority for Pacific nations. Creel and market surveys are increasingly used to document catches but this information has not been aggregated at a regional scale. Aims In this paper we provide a comprehensive and standardized list of Pacific marine foodfishes in 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories to enable comparative analyses and improved national surveys. Methods National lists of marine teleost fish caught for food were cleaned of errors and standardized to current valid names using authoritative global databases. National lists were subsequently aggregated to subregional and regional scales. Key results Pacific people were found to consume more than 1000 species of marine fish (presently 1031 species), with the highest diversity observed in Melanesia and the lowest in Polynesia. A total of 14% of species names have changed since surveys were completed. An estimated 3847 species of marine fish are recorded from the region, most of which are small reef species. This list of Pacific foodfish is available through the Pacific Data Hub curated by the Pacific Community. Conclusions The study quantifies, for the first time, the great diversity of fishes consumed by Pacific people and highlights the need for more baselines of catch, acquisition and consumption. Implications These findings provide a foundation across the region for analysing species’ relative importance in local economies and diets, supporting fisheries management and food security policies critical to the wellbeing of Pacific people in a changing world.

Tying social protection to the blue economy—using marine resources for rural economic growth and improved livelihoods while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem - is potentially a powerful and sustainable means of improving small-scale fisheries. This paper examines critical links between social protection and the blue economy, emphasizing small-scale fisheries as part of a broader transformative social protection agenda. In the face of climate change and other global shocks, shock-responsive social protection and adaptive social protection may be useful frameworks to envisage social protection in the fisheries sector. We discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of enhancing social protection for fisheries-dependent households and how social protection and fisheries management initiatives can be complementary. Particularly, we underscore the importance of enhancing economic inclusion and sustainable fisheries management through the possible implementation and rollout of various social protection policies and programmes that address marine and aquatic food systems. We provide support on the importance of various social protection instruments-both formal and informal for supporting marine and aquatic food systems both proactively and reactively for enhanced livelihoods. To end, we highlight and discuss issues of marginalisation and the significant youth and gender gaps which are commonplace in the fisheries sector, identifying some areas for policy entry and action.

Traditional approaches to maritime security focus on state and economic perspectives. We suggest that a more holistic approach to maritime security is needed that encompasses state, economic, human and environmental security to make maritime security more equitable, sustainable and responsive to contemporary social and environmental challenges. Adopting a normative human and eco-centric approach to maritime security, which revolves around the needs of coastal communities and the imperative of ocean sustainability, can be guided by four principles: participation and pluralism, autonomy and agency, equity and justice, and coherence and coordination.

AbstractFor Pacific Island people, coastal fisheries are fundamental for supporting livelihoods, nutrition and health, cultures, and economies. However, only in the last 30 years has the region’s fisheries policy come to recognize the significant contributions of coastal fisheries and the need for national management strategies. This chapter tracks the evolving regional policy on coastal fisheries, including the challenges and opportunities for prospective regional and national policy formation and implementation. Regional policy first recognized the importance of management across coastal waters in 2003; since then, this recognition has increased through a series of directives and strategic frameworks. The need to accelerate the national implementation of coastal fisheries management has led fisheries agency staff and other science and civil society stakeholders to collectively develop, under the auspices of the Pacific Community (SPC), the “Pacific Framework for Action on Scaling up Community-based Fisheries Management: 2021–2025.” Regional policies are specifically targeted and prioritized for national needs and provide the most effective means of support delivery. The SSF Guidelines are supplementary, particularly in the areas of human rights, and their further integration through joint delivery at the national level will be important. Over 600 community-based fisheries management sites have been documented across the Pacific Islands, which in some countries includes most fishing communities. These sites represent almost the entirety of coastal marine protected areas, which are significant for achieving international conservation targets. However, in highly populated countries, substantial community coverage remains unlikely, suggesting that other aspects of the enabling environment need to be addressed. More crucially, implementation is challenged by limitations to national staffing and recurrent budgets. With increasing philanthropic interest in funding locally governed marine and coastal areas, it will be crucial that these efforts build on the substantial progress made and are guided by regional and national public policy. A critical consideration is ensuring substantially increased management budgets and administrative capacity of fisheries agencies.

Participatory fisheries monitoring can create many benefits, such as increasing community engagement in marine management, generating data for data-poor fisheries, and empowerment of fishing communities. Although most participatory monitoring studies have focused on men monitoring their own fishing activities, evidence from studies examining women’s increased participation in broader fisheries management suggests that monitoring programmes should also incorporate gender-inclusive approaches. Furthermore, the data collectors’ perspectives regarding the effects that participating has on themselves or their community are often not included in reporting or evaluating monitoring processes and methodologies. Such gaps in participatory monitoring approaches may overlook different people’s participation and experiences of fisheries and their management, and so disregard the general consensus that community-based fisheries are deeply socially embedded. Using the participatory photography methodology, photovoice, this paper explores women’s participation in fisheries management, and how this links with various forms of empowerment, as represented by stories and images shared by the participants of a fisheries monitoring programme in Timor-Leste. Their resulting photo stories explore motivations for participating in the monitoring programme, the enabling or constraining conditions which influence participation, and the implications for broader marine management. The participants’ photo stories demonstrate the importance of relationships in creating an enabling environment for participatory processes, and how monitoring can be relationship-building, creating a positive feedback loop that leads to awareness-raising, empowerment, advocacy and collective action. This study contributes to the growing body of literature around participatory monitoring as an empowering process by amplifying the voices of women through unpacking their experiences and aspirations.

Understanding what diversity of small-scale fisheries translates to in practice, and what this means for management regimes seeking sustainability, continues to be a challenging undertaking. This is particularly so in the tropical Pacific Islands region, where small-scale coastal fisheries play a significant role in domestic food and livelihood systems. A renewed regional policy focus on supporting coastal fisheries, combined with momentum built from a decades-long 'Pacific renaissance' in community-based fisheries management approaches, has increased resourcing and support for coastal fishery data collection and knowledge production. In this context, there is growing demand to explicitly characterise diversity and complexity of community-based coastal fisheries to inform how national co-management programs can adequately support the many communities within national constituencies. This study presents findings from a community-based coastal fisheries monitoring programme implemented in ten communities across Kiribati and Vanuatu between 2019 and 2021. Findings illustrate the intra- and inter-country diversity of contextual drivers, fishing practices, and fisher participation. We discuss the implications of this enhanced understanding of community-based fisheries for applied co-management practice in these two countries. In doing so, we add to a growing knowledge base about fishing practices in Pacific Island coastal communities and elucidate avenues through which to incorporate this knowledge into adaptive co-management practice.

Pacific Island Countries and Territories are highly exposed to natural disasters, intensified by increases in frequency and force of extreme weather events. Pacific societies, like in Vanuatu, have been shaped in many ways by such natural disasters; reflected in customary practices and social fabric of rural coastal communities. When a natural disaster occurs, government attention justifiably focuses on channelling and coordinating international humanitarian aid to fill gaps in capacity and resourcing national recovery efforts. However, central to disaster recovery, particularly in the immediate aftermath of disruption, are the ways that local people support each other (within and between communities). Disconnects between national and local recovery efforts are common and stand to inhibit effective responses. This study aims to understand horizontal, self-organised community-to-community support systems and communities’ post-disaster engagement with external aid. It draws from two different datasets: i) the observations collected through the emergency relief work led by the National Disaster Management Office in Vanuatu shortly after the 2023 twin tropical cyclones Judy and Kevin hit the country, as well as ii) the loss and damage survey led by the Vanuatu Fisheries Department to estimate the level of damage these cyclones caused in various regions of Vanuatu. Through this process, we highlight the social systems that enable community-to-community support, as well as potential opportunities for external-aid to support communities in a more efficient manner. Results reveal that community-to-community support is critical in the first weeks post-disaster. Recognizing the roles that different support networks play at different stages of disaster response is critical not only to improving people's and institutions' ability to bounce back from particular disruptions, but also in broader efforts to strengthen community resilience in the face of climate change.

This paper presents the design and development of a coastal fisheries monitoring system that harnesses artificial intelligence technologies. Application of the system across the Pacific region promises to revolutionize coastal fisheries management. The program is built on a centralized, cloud-based monitoring system to automate data extraction and analysis processes. The system leverages YoloV4, OpenCV, and ResNet101 to extract information from images of fish and invertebrates collected as part of in-country monitoring programs overseen by national fisheries authorities. As of December 2023, the system has facilitated automated identification of over six hundred nearshore finfish species, and automated length and weight measurements of more than 80,000 specimens across the Pacific. The system integrates other key fisheries monitoring data such as catch rates, fishing locations and habitats, volumes, pricing, and market characteristics. The collection of these metrics supports much needed rapid fishery assessments. The system’s co-development with national fisheries authorities and the geographic extent of its application enables capacity development and broader local inclusion of fishing communities in fisheries management. In doing so, the system empowers fishers to work with fisheries authorities to enable data-informed decision-making for more effective adaptive fisheries management. The system overcomes historically entrenched technical and financial barriers in fisheries management in many Pacific island communities.

In interrogating the dynamics of social inclusion in small island communities and how that influences peoples' resilience to sociopolitical and environmental changes around them, this chapter examines two imaginaries about island societies, namely, the romanticising of island customs, traditions and ways of life and the homogenous framing of small island communities. We challenge the unnuanced and dichotomous narratives that often dominate discussions about social inclusion by adopting an intersectional approach. This approach seeks to explore the complex and dynamic power relations within and between communities. We aim to develop a deeper understanding of why there are often unbalanced levels of resilience among particular groups of people or households within a community and how social mechanisms enable inclusion and/or perpetuate the exclusion of different groups. We draw on three case studies to examine resilience differentials across several island geographies: (1) gendered aspects of livelihood dynamism in Timor-Leste, (2) challenges for youth engagement in Tonga, and (3) indigenous and migrant relations in coastal communities in Vanuatu. We further use the impacts of COVID-19 to understand in our case studies the multidimensional nature of social inclusion and how interactions between different groups under stress can materialise in intensified inclusion or exclusion of social groups.

Resilience as a complex concept has been recognised and employed to strategise mitigation policies and processes during disruptive events. Island resilience in particular is used to frame islanders and their societies as vulnerable entities combating uncertainties with limited resources and capacities. On the one hand, public discourse on island nations tends to centre around victimhood amid disasters; on the other hand, islands are portrayed as peaceful and idyllic paradise during regular times. This opening chapter uses the term ‘imaginary’ to signify such discourses that construct one’s understanding of island societies. We first outline the conceptual framing around the evolution of resilience. Then we elaborate on four prominent ‘imaginaries’ of Small Island Developing States and island societies in general. By unpacking the term ‘imaginary’, we aim to expose the dominant discursive framing of island societies to elucidate constructive avenues for locally owned progress and development in an increasingly variable and glocalised world.

In small-scale fisheries management, the significance of participation is widely recognised but we are still learning how this can be better operationalised to include different groups, such as women or Indigenous peoples. Participatory monitoring is one tool which has been used to increase participation in fisheries management. The aim of this review is to use critical interpretive synthesis to examine the literature on participatory monitoring within community-based fisheries management from a gender perspective. The synthesis identified and discussed several key areas: reasons presented in the literature for engaging with the themes of gender or participatory monitoring, gendered aspects of participatory monitoring, knowledge valuation and prioritisation in management, replicability and transparency of programme or research methods, and marginalisation narratives. Our findings show the complexities of conducting gender-aware participatory monitoring. Participatory monitoring has the potential to be a transformative and empowering process if the power dynamics involved are considered and addressed.

Across Southeast Asia, coastal livelihoods are becoming more diverse and more commodified, as maritime zone developments intensify. We review literature from the ten maritime states in Southeast Asia to assess how older and emerging forms of maritime zone developments influence the viability of small-scale fishing livelihoods. Applying a political economy lens to small-scale fisheries and maritime zone developments at regional scale, we show how small-scale fisheries persist as a significant coastal livelihood activity across the region, despite declining opportunities due to long-term intensification of fisheries exploitation. The paper further analyses the ways in which newer maritime zone developments, including aquaculture, land reclamation, special industrial zones, and tourism interact with fishing, and are reconfiguring coastal livelihoods in the region. Key trends that small-scale fishers and coastal communities must negotiate include deepening commodification, worsening environmental degradation, loss of access to fishing grounds, and an intensifying ‘squeeze’ on coastal space.

Rural, tropical coastal communities are experiencing sustained, often increasing food insecurity, poverty, and global change impacts. These challenges have stimulated a rise in projects aiming to enhance and diversify local livelihoods. The ability of these projects to achieve broad-scale benefits is limited by approaches that do not account for feedbacks among sectors and across marine and terrestrial environments. To address these limitations, we present an applied research agenda to support an integrated approach to livelihood project planning and management. This agenda explicitly examines interactions among natural resources, industries, and livelihoods and is based on three foundational activities: (1) a governance review and assessment, (2) strategic partnership formation, and (3) a diagnostic approach supported by science and shared outcomes. We add structure to the established logic in our field by broadening the sectoral and spatial scope of livelihoods projects, so they can better contribute to interrelated UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Evidence-informed decision-making is in increasing demand given growing pressures on marine environments. A way to facilitate this is by knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decision-makers. While many barriers are reported in the literature, there are also examples whereby research has successfully informed marine decision-making (i.e., 'bright-spots'). Here, we identify and analyze 25 bright-spots from a wide range of marine fields, contexts, and locations to provide insights into how to improve knowledge exchange at the interface of marine science and policy. Through qualitative surveys we investigate what initiated the bright-spots, their goals, and approaches to knowledge exchange. We also seek to identify what outcomes/impacts have been achieved, the enablers of success, and what lessons can be learnt to guide future knowledge exchange efforts. Results show that a diversity of approaches were used for knowledge exchange, from consultative engagement to genuine knowledge co-production. We show that diverse successes at the interface of marine science and policy are achievable and include impacts on policy, people, and governance. Such successes were enabled by factors related to the actors, processes, support, context, and timing. For example, the importance of involving diverse actors and managing positive relationships is a key lesson for success. However, enabling routine success will require: 1) transforming the ways in which we train scientists to include a greater focus on interpersonal skills, 2) institutionalizing and supporting knowledge exchange activities in organizational agendas, 3) conceptualizing and implementing broader research impact metrics, and 4) transforming funding mechanisms to focus on need-based interventions, impact planning, and an acknowledgement of the required time and effort that underpin knowledge exchange activities.

Co-management approaches have become a core part of coastal fisheries policy and planning practice in Vanuatu. With a long history of supporting community based fisheries management (CBFM), we trace its evolution in Vanuatu to understand how new structures and processes become adopted at scale. A theory of scaling for CBFM guides the analysis of regime shifts over time. We discuss planning for sustained spread under a national programme by categorising multiple drivers of change through three intervention pathways focussed, respectively, on developing (i) an enabling environment, (ii) institutional and individual capacity, and (iii) focussed innovative action in smaller targeted constituencies. Whilst we argue that local fisheries co-management institutions balance competing interests, and so differ amongst places, we also recognise the importance of connectivity and continuity. The realisation of a national programme therefore requires patchworks of siloed projects to be knitted together into coordinated programmatic approaches that strategically integrate activities.

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) provide crucial contributions to livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and the well-being of coastal communities worldwide. In Indonesia, 2.5 million households are involved in SSF production, yet these households are characterised by high poverty rates and vulnerability due to declining ecosystem health and climatic change. In this study we applied the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to analyse the characteristics and immediate and longer-term outcomes of 20 SSF livelihood-focused intervention programs implemented in coastal communities across the Indonesian Archipelago over the last two decades. Projects covered a wide range of spatial scales, funding providers and key participants. Factors supporting positive program outcomes included application of inclusive and holistic approaches to sustainable livelihoods, implemented and supported over appropriate time frames; use of participatory capacity development methodologies and locally-situated project facilitators; and collaborative engagement with local government, non-government organisations and private-sector actors. However, it was impossible to identify evidenced successes from a longer-term sustainability perspective. Short project timeframes, absence of baseline or monitoring data, pressure for satisfactory reports to donors, and limited post-project evaluation, together with invisibility of women's work and non-commercial exchanges, affected the adequacy of assessments. Given the lack of post-project assessment among projects studied, a thorough review of longer-term project impacts is recommended, guided by the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, to evaluate sustained improvements in livelihoods outcomes and environmental sustainability. This would support best-practice design and implementation of SSF livelihood-focused interventions, disseminated beyond academia, to influence policy and development to achieve socio-economic equity and environmental goals.

Voluntary (or non-binding) commitments offer an action-oriented mechanism for addressing interconnected, complex and pressing issues. Though not designed to replace negotiated or binding outcomes, voluntary commitments can offer a critical tool in currently ungoverned or under-governed systems. The Blue Economy is an example of a rapidly evolving agenda where formal governance arrangements are at best nascent, in part due to the trans-border nature of issues and prominent involvement of multiple types of actors. As such voluntary commitments provide an important mechanism through which to monitor the evolution of the concept and identify gaps or shortfalls in its implementation. Our analysis of global voluntary commitments on the Blue Economy made to recent high-profile ocean futures meetings, found a trend towards capacity development, research, and investment in emerging and larger scale sectors such as offshore aquaculture and renewable energy. A concurrent focus was on securitizing, regulating or diverting effort from historically significant fisheries sectors. European organizations are playing a dominant role in Blue Economy commitments, with a notable absence of commitments from major Blue Economy powers such as China and India. We identify a number of gaps and shortfalls, particularly in relation to active consideration of social equity in the Blue Economy. We identify a range of recommendations on how these deficiencies may be addressed through a greater focus on a broader suite of objectives and a more inclusive approach to ocean meetings.

Community-based approaches to fisheries management has emerged as a mainstream strategy to govern dispersed, diverse and dynamic small scale fisheries. However, amplifying local community led sustainability outcomes remains an enduring challenge. We seek to fill a theoretical gap in the conceptualization of 'scaling up community-based fisheries management'. We draw on literature of agriculture innovations to provide a framework that takes into account process-driven and structural change occurring across multiple levels of governance, as well as different phases of scaling. We hypothesize that successful scaling requires engagement with all aspects of a governing regime, coalescing a range of actors, and therefore, is an enterprise that is larger than its parts. To demonstrate where the framework offers value, we illustrate the development of community-based fisheries management in Vanuatu according to the framework's main scaling dimensions.

The trepang1 trade has historically sustained livelihoods in the Arafura Timor Seas (ATS) region and continues today (Adhuri, 2013b; Fox, 2000). The early trade was centred on the port of Makassar and undertaken predominantly by Makassarese, Bugis, Butonese and Bajau fishers based in southern Sulawesi (Clark & May, 2013a). Now generally referred to as ‘Macassans’, these traders negotiated with the Indigenous landowners in Indonesia and Northern Australia for rights to access trepang stocks and sell the dried product to the Chinese market for hundreds of years (MacKnight, 1976). Such arrangements were typically organised around customary governance regimes on land and sea territory that recognised Indigenous ownership. Throughout the twentieth century, much of the region came under the jurisdiction of some form of central nationstate government, while international trade increasingly became subject