Chemical contaminants in food in Pacific Island countries

The presence in foods of chemical contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, aflatoxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) has been of international concern for decades. Since most of these are associated with intensive industrial and agricultural activity, the minimal existence of such activities in Pacific island countries has led to the conclusion that the consumption of these contaminants in food is unlikely to be a health problem in the Pacific. Because of this little effort has been expended in studying the level of these contarnlnants in Pacific foods. Most of the data are from environmental studies in which some of the analytes are edible. These have mainly been performed at the three major universities in the region, the University of the South Pacific, the University of Guam and the University of Papua New Guinea. Some data are also available from a Japanese study. More recently the United States Environmental Protection Agency has been studying sites potentially contaminated by PCBs in the forrner United States Trust Territories. It should be emphasized that these are scientific studies of the incidence of pollution and not country-driven analyses of the status of these pollutants in the food supply. It is also important to recognize that for the tropical Pacific islands the most important chemical food contaminants are a variety of marine toxins, especially ciguatoxins, that affect health and economies of a significant percentage of Pacific islanders

Value of traditional oral narratives in building climate-change resilience: insights from rural communities in Fiji

In the interests of improving engagement with Pacific Island communities to enable development of effective and sustainable adaptation strategies to climate change, we looked at how traditional oral narratives in rural/peripheral Fiji communities might be used to inform such strategies. Interviews were undertaken and observations made in 27 communities; because the custodians of traditional knowledge were targeted, most interviewees were 70-79 years old. The view that oral traditions, particularly those referring to environmental history and the observations/precursors of environmental change, were endangered was widespread and regretted. Interviewees’ personal experiences of extreme events (natural disasters) were commonplace but no narratives of historical (unwitnessed by interviewees) events were found. In contrast, experiences of previous village relocations attributable (mainly) to environmental change were recorded in five communities while awareness of environmentally driven migration was more common. Questions about climate change elicited views dominated by religious/fatalist beliefs but included some more pragmatic ones; the confusion of climate change with climate variability, which is part of traditional knowledge, was widespread. The erosion of traditional environmental knowledge in the survey communities over recent decades has been severe and is likely to continue apace, which will reduce community self-sufficiency and resilience. Ways of conserving such knowledge and incorporating it into adaptation planning for Pacific Island communities in rural/peripheral locations should be explored

Placing the Fijian Honeyeaters within the meliphagid radiation: implications for origins and conservation

Understanding the evolutionary relationships of threatened species provides an important framework for making decisions about their conservation. However, unrecognised problems with the underlying phylogenetic analyses may bias the decision-making process. Recent phylogenetic studies have improved our understanding of Meliphagidae, but also indicate discordance between molecular datasets. Here, we examine the causes of this discordance using maximum likelihood tree-building and network analyses of identically sampled datasets for four genetic loci. Our results suggest that while we can be reasonably confident of relationships within species groups, discordance within and between molecular datasets tends to obscure relationships towards the base of the meliphagid tree. This ongoing uncertainty likely reflects differences in the sampling of markers and taxa between previously published analyses. To avoid the problems of conflicting data we used divergence time analyses of only the most densely sampled marker, NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase chain 2, to investigate the age and origins of the Fijian Meliphagidae. Our analyses suggest two temporally distinct colonisations of the Fijian archipelago. The large-bodied honeyeaters arrived ,15.6 million years ago, subsequently diversifying and spreading to Tonga and Samoa. In contrast, Myzomela appears to have arrived within the last 5.0 million years. The phylogenetic results therefore imply that conserving the evolutionary diversity of Meliphagidae in Polynesia requires that effort be spread across both the currently recognised taxa and geographical range

The role of locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) in the development of Ecotourism in Fiji

This report provides an overview of the characteristics and implementation of Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA) in the Pacific region, and outlines the status of LMMA activities in Palau, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the Federated States of Micronesia. The report provides a case study of the Fiji LMMA Network; presenting the process followed and outcomes achieved. It has been observed that “small community-based protected areas can yield significant increase in biological productivity and associated biodiversity also seems to increase in undisturbed (protected) areas.” Socioeconomic benefits from LMMAs have also been observed; in one area there has been reported a significant increase household income and an increase in catch rates. The author reports that community and cultural pride have increased with spread of the successes being experienced, and interest has been developed in the younger generations in both scientific and traditional ways. Community cohesion has increased and skills developed in resource planning, monitoring, analysis and communication. The report highlights that “some individual LMMA sites have already discovered the mutual benefits of having the tourism industry be closely involved in these community-based conservation efforts” and communicates a hope that the involvement of the tourism industry in LMMA network will continue and develop

Marine toxins in the Island Pacific

The earliest European explorers in the Pacific have written about the occurrence of toxic fish in the islands they visited. In the last 25 or so years scientists have begun to study and understand more about the variety of toxins that exist. This research has been hampered by the extreme toxicity and thus low concentrations of the toxins in the relevant marine organisms