Aquarium products in the Pacific Islands: a review of the fisheries, management and trade – Robert Gillett, Mike A. McCoy, Ian Bertram, Jeff Kinch, Aymeric Desurmont and Andrew Halford

March 2020

Fiji’s Resilient Reefs

Coral reefs are ancient, living organisms, which have seen and adapted to many changes over millions of years.

It’s one of the oddities of the human race that we expect natural systems to be constant, but as the climate and environment alter, so do reefs around the world, and those in Fiji are no exception.

As you travel around Fiji you will soon come to realise that there are many types of reefs – spectacular hard coral walls, colourful soft coral bommies, dramatic and spooky rocky passages, rubble patches filled with weird and wonderful critters.

What you may not realise is that these reefs change year by year, react to pressures in many different ways, grow and adapt like any other natural ecosystem.

Branching and Table corals can grow 5 – 10 cm per year. Boulder corals 1 – 2 cm per year.

In Fiji, corals spawn in October and November, tiny new colonies are usually first visible by about April or May.

This document Fisheries of the Pacific Islands: Regional and national information provides a recent update of the fisheries and aquaculture sector in the Pacific Region. The document consists of 2 main parts: a regional overview; and fisheries and aquaculture country profiles for the 14 independent Pacific Island countries. It consolidates a variety of sources of information into a single coherent review, to provide a general understanding of the status of fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific Islands.

The Pacific Island region consists of fourteen independent countries and eight territories located in the western and central Pacific Ocean. In this area there are about 200 high islands and some 2 500 low islands and atolls.