Fishes on Fellowship: Socioeconomic Surveys

Over the past few weeks, I've been helping with some of PICRC's socioeconomic studies. In my opinion, this kind of research is just as important to conservation as biological and ecological studies, since it reveals the realities of how people are using natural resources, arguably the most significant determinant of those resources' fates.

For one study, I accompanied Shirley and Danika to interview local community members in the northern state Ngardmau. They were talking to individuals, heads of households, and community leaders about their fishing and farming habits, asking how they've changed over the years and whether and how much Ngardmau's Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have affected them, as well as inquiring about their basic awareness of MPAs, other conservation efforts, and threats to the reefs. From what I observed in the interviews and from helping with data entry, respondents generally noted a decline in fishing catch over the years and were supportive of the MPAs, although some commented that the MPAs were not doing enough or were insufficiently enforced.

Shirley asks this woman, the head of her household, about her family's income and expenditures.

I also helped with an economic valuation study of Napoleon wrasse and bumphead parrotfish, two economically and culturally important fish species in Palau. Due to declining populations, fishing of either of these species was banned in 2006, but there's talk of reopening the fisheries, at least at the subsistence level. This survey was designed to determine how much these fish are worth to the tourism industry by asking dive tourists how much they'd be willing to pay for dives on which they'd see Napoleons or bumpheads of various sizes and densities.

After Katherine and I spent many fruitless hours lurking around dive shops hoping to catch tourists as they came back from their dives, the whole PICRC research crew jumped in with a major attack plan. We set out in pairs to the Rock Islands, where tour groups often debark for lunch, and camped out with surveys in various languages, waiting to pounce on unwitting tourists as they sat down to their bentos. Uly was my partner for the week and we prowled Two Dog Beach, our mission to leave no visitor to enjoy his or her lunch surveyless. Although we encountered the occasional unwilling or rude tourist, for the most part people accepted our clipboards and pencils, and the five teams collected nearly three hundred surveys during our week-long blitz. When people were receptive and interested it was great to hear their thoughts on conservation and the reefs, and it certainly wasn't terrible to spend a week out in the Rock Islands!