| Abstract: |
Anthropologists and resource managers have long debated the role of indigenous marine tenure in the Pacific and its influence on resource use and conservation. The general notion is that marine tenure institutions have evolved as elements of cultural systems to conserve marine resources. This idea has attained wide acceptance without the benefit of a rigorous ecological model to account for resource conservation strategies, or lack thereof, in the foraging practices of artisanal fishers. Analysis has remained general and descriptive, and little has been done to elucidate the micro-ecology of daily human-marine interactions. Foraging theory, as developed in evolutionary ecology, is offered as the central theoretical framework in this study to examine patterns of habitat selection and marine harvest-time use among Melanesia fishers in the Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons, Solomon Islands. Fishing activities are also explored in their historical, cultural, economic, and ecological context. Results show that fishers select habitats according to their seasonal productivity. Concurrently, and less intuitively, as habitat productivity increases, less time is spent at particular fishing grounds and more areas within the habitat are visited. Frequent mobility between accessible grounds allows fishers to sustain considerable catches before any of the visited grounds undergoes resource depletion. Conversely, as habitat productivity decreases, more time is spent at a particular ground and less areas are visited as it does not pay for fishers to move elsewhere within the habitat if they cannot do better. The results reveal that Roviana and Vonavona fishers are foraging optimally and that the consequences of such strategies can result in either resource conservation or depletion depending on varying environmental conditions. The use of foraging theory provides a persuasive case to show that the consequences of human foraging behavior are conditional and dynamic, thus cannot be placed into tidy logical categories such as 'conservationist' or 'non conservationist.' The results generated by the foraging models are considered here in relation to their significance in linking evolutionary ecology to the anthropology of coastal resource management. Such integration should contribute to build a clearer anthropological model that describes the relationship between human foraging and fishery management.
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