News

Samoa's campaign to save its national bird, the manumea, was jointly launched on the weekend by New Zealand's Prime Minister. Link to full article below

The head of the United Nations body responsible for ocean conservation says indigenous Pacific knowledge can help define the science needed to save the ocean. Link to full article below.

Representatives from five Pacific island countries have been in Nadi this week to begin the development of regional and national plans to implement the European Union (EU) funded Pacific-European Union Marine Partnership (PEUMP) programme Bycatch and Integrated Ecosystem Management (BIEM) compone

A huge roadbuilding scheme in Papua New Guinea could imperil some of the largest, biologically richest and culturally most diverse forests on the planet, says an international research team led by James Cook University in Australia.Click on the link below to read the full article. 

Small island developing states are the custodians of much of the world’s oceans.

Now researchers at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have found evidence that tuna are spawning in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), one of the largest marine protected areas in the world, covering an area of the central Pacific as large as Argentina.

POFC 2019 is organised by the Pacific Ocean Finance Program, implemented through the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC; affiliated with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat).

Although Discovery Channel showcases its Shark Week programming for only seven days each summer, sharks—along with rays—deserve year-round attention for their roles in maintaining a healthy ocean and providing economic benefits through ecotourism.

"Wild foods," or wild edible species, provide important nutrients for millions of people worldwide, but they were left out of a recent report on creating sustainable food systems. Click on the link below to read the full article. 

Figures from the World Bank show that nearly one-third of global fish populations are overexploited. This has been driven by the rising demand for seafood across the world, but especially in China.