Jeff Kinch

Food and Agriculture Officer

Shellcraft is a livelihood activity that utilizes shells and skeletal remains of marine taxa for producing ornamental and decorative items. Despite an increasing importance of shellcraft in coastal areas of the Indo-Pacific region, information necessary for stakeholders to identify and respond to change through policy and management decisions is of...

Numerous policy and international frameworks consider that “destructive fishing” hampers efforts to reach sustainability goals. Though ubiquitous, “destructive fishing” is undefined and therefore currently immeasurable. Here we propose a definition developed through expert consultation: “Destructive fishing is any fishing practice that causes irrec...

There is renewed interest in the capacity of private investors to use the revenues from the sale of carbon credits or offsets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the process of deforestation and forest degradation and thus help high-emission countries like Australia to meet their emission reduction targets. Papua New Guinea is one of the countr...

Bivalves (Mollusca: Bivalvia) and gastropods (Mollusca: Gastropoda) are a common component of diets in the Pacific Islands region. After consuming the soft tissue of these organisms, their shells are commonly discarded. We consider how such discards, or shell wastes, might serve as a resource for value-adding activities and focus on a case study of...

Interest in sea cucumber mariculture in the Pacific Islands region is growing due to the serial depletion of wild populations. Hatchery-produced or wild-collected juvenile or subadult sea cucumbers of several species can be used in mariculture applications, including sea-pen farming in the ocean, sea ranching in unenclosed marine areas, stocking in...

This study investigated the genetic structure, diversity, and migratory patterns of hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) from two nesting locations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing and satellite telemetry. Tissue samples collected from nesting female hawksbill turtles (n=75) in PNG revealed a total of 6 hap...

Sustainable utilization of marine taxa is critical for maximizing social and economic goals of livelihood development within the Indo-Pacific. Yet, despite an increasing importance of shellcraft as a livelihood activity within the Indo-Pacific, information on the taxa utilized within shellcraft sectors remains scant. To address this knowledge gap,...

Local, regional, and global events have potential to disturb fisheries systems embedded within international trade networks. Events associated with sudden and unexpected disturbances, or shocks, in fisheries systems are of particular concern because of their potential to adversely impact the livelihoods and well-being of coastal communities. For th...

High demand and prices in global markets for luxury seafood fished by coastal communities in low-income contexts causes overfishing. There are few alternatives for fishers to earn money, most institutions for controlling effort are weak, and markets are beyond the control of fishing states. The mismatch between desires for development and governanc...

A checklist of the marine and estuarine fishes of New Ireland Province is presented, with special emphasis on Kavieng District, combining both previous and new records. After the recent KAVIENG 2014 expedition, a total of 1325 species in 153 families were recorded from the region. The largest families are the Gobiidae, Pomacentridae, Labridae, Serr...

The majority of the world's fisheries lack formal management and assessment due to limitations in data, management capacity, or both. Capacity-limited fisheries generally contain some combination of limited infrastructure, personnel or expertise which hampers the ability of fisheries administrations to develop, implement and maintain desired manage...

A thorough understanding of livelihoods is necessary to ensure development policies are compatible with both resource conservation and the social and economic goals of development. Few studies, however, focus on value-adding activities occurring post-harvest in artisanal fisheries. The transformation of mollusc shells and skeletal remains of other...

As fish stocks become depleted, exploitation eventually fails to be cost-efficient. However, species or morphs of species can suffer from continual exploitation if their rarity results in increased value, justifying the cost-efficiency of targeted or opportunistic exploitation. The trade in coral reef fishes for public and private aquaria is an ind...

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) marine aquarium fishery was partly managed by total allowable catch (TAC) limits, implemented since the fishery's inception in 2008. Species-specific TACs, based on stock assessments conducted prior to the commencement of fishing, were established for all fish and invertebrate species presumed to be fished by the fishery....

A major difficulty in managing live organism wildlife trade is often the reliance on trade data to monitor exploitation of wild populations. Harvested organisms that die or are discarded before a point of sale are regularly not reported. For the global marine aquarium trade, identifying supply-chain losses is necessary to more accurately assess exp...

Abstract On 1 April 2017, the Papua New Guinea (PNG) nationwide moratorium on sea cucumber fishing and the beche-de-mer trade was lifted seven-and-a-half years after it was introduced. The National Fisheries Author�ity (NFA) had revised the National Bêche-de-mer Fishery Management Plan (the Plan) prior to the fishery opening and allocated provinc...

Small-scale shark fisheries in Papua New Guinea have developed rapidly and are largely unmanaged. While shark species are vulnerable to overexploitation, local fishers who depend on shark fin for income also have limited alternative income options. This implies a difficult trade-off for policy makers between conservation and community welfare. A ca...

Livelihood diversity factors such as flexibility within fisheries, geographical mobility, reallocation of fishing effort into the broader economy, and the non-material benefits that fisheries provide are important areas of research in marine policy. We use two small-scale fisheries related socio-economic surveys of communities in the Tigak Islands...

Over recent decades it has become widely accepted that managing fisheries resources means managing human behaviour, and so understanding social and economic dynamics is just as important as understanding species biology and ecology. Until recently, fisheries managers and researchers have struggled to develop effective methods and data for social an...

Tropical sea cucumber, called béche-de-mer (BDM) in its dried form, is a luxury seafood and health food, with its main market in southern China and smaller markets in Singapore, Malaysia and other countries.1 Regional markets for BDM have existed for centuries, and they have expanded greatly since the 1980s with growing incomes in China. Sea cucumb...

In this paper we discuss differences in the ways transnational conservationists and Melanesian farmers, hunters and fishers value 'biodiversity'. The money for conservation projects in developing countries originates from people who are embedded in a capitalist system, which allows engagement with nature as an abstract entity. Their western educati...

Coral reef fishes exhibit extreme diversity in colouration, with many species being recognised as having colour polymorphism. While melanin-based colouration is known to occur in clownfishes (Pomacentridae), little is known about the frequency at which melanistic morphs occur in natural populations. The aim of this study was to assess the frequency...

A major difficulty in managing wildlife trade is the reliance on trade data (rather than capture data) to monitor exploitation of wild populations. Collected organisms that die or are rejected before a point of sale often go unreported. For the global marine aquarium trade, identifying the loss of collected fish from rejection, prior to export, is...

The recent resurrection of a Tridacna maxima sensu Rosewater (1965) ecotype as a distinct species, Tridacna noae (Röding, 1798), has raised concerns that inadvertent confusion of the two species in the past may have led to overestimates of T.maxima densities and errors in determining demographic parameters. To assess the potential impacts of such a...

We reconstruct marine fisheries catches for Papua New Guinea (PNG) from 1950-2010 to account for catches missing from official statistics. Annual national landings statistics are dominated by tuna catches, which have been relatively well documented since 2000. Nonetheless, PNG’s national fisheries statistics are still considered to be incomplete an...

Equatorial populations of marine species are predicted to be most impacted by global warming because they could be adapted to a narrow range of temperatures in their local environment. We investigated the thermal range at which aerobic metabolic performance is optimum in equatorial populations of coral reef fish in northern Papua New Guinea. Four s...

Purpose: To critically assess engagements with capitalism in coastal fisheries development, considering their success or otherwise for coastal villagers. Approach: Using field research and written reports of projects and the concept of "social embeddedness" we analyze two fisheries development projects as local instances of capitalism. Findings: Co...

Purpose: To critically assess engagements with capitalism in coastal fisheries development, considering their success or otherwise for coastal villagers. Approach: Using field research and written reports of projects and the concept of 'social embeddedness' we analyse two fisheries development projects as local instances of capitalism. Findings: Co...

Despite the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) defining 20 targets across 5 strategic goals, Target 11, which relates to protected areas, has received the most emphasis from donors, non-government organisations, and governments, as a performance standard for conservation in Melanesia. Protected area targets, however, may not be culturally or...

Spatial variation in growth is a common feature of demersal fish populations which often exist as discrete adult sub-populations linked by a pelagic larval stage. However, it remains unclear whether variation in growth occurs at similar spatial scales for populations of highly migratory pelagic species, such as tuna. We examined spatial variation i...

The South Pacific has experienced a remarkable proliferation of Marine Managed Areas in the last decade. These protected areas, implemented by over 500 communities spanning 15 independent countries and territories represent a unique global achievement. The approaches being developed at national levels are built on a unique feature of the region, cu...

SUmmARy Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of the largest countries in the Western Central Pacific region and is now the third largest producer of bêche-de-mer in the world, supplying around 10 percent of the global market. Species of commercial importance recognized by the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) include Actinopyga echinites, A. lecanora, A,...

"Property rights and marine tenure have a crucial bearing on questions of resource sustainability for the MBP and there is a need to understand how institutions help users cope with resource use problems, particularly in a changing political, ecological and social world. Traditionally, when everyone got all the fish they wanted, rights and boundari...