Group Coordinator and Bulletin Editor
Production
Pacific Community, Fisheries Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division, Information Section, SPC, BP D5, 98848 Noumea Cedex, New Caledonia.Editor’s note
This edition contains two articles that are both centred on Melanesian topics.
The first, ‘Catching names: Folk taxonomy of marine fauna on Takuu Atoll, Papua New Guinea’, by Anke Moesinger, describes and analyses how the islanders of Takuu Atoll perceive and make use of their marine environment. This article also presents an analysis of the Takuu residents’ descriptions and classifications of 200 local marine vertebrates and invertebrates.
The second article ‘A field survey of the green snail (Turbo marmoratus) in Vanuatu: Habitat density, effects of transplantation, and villagers’ motives for participation in transplantation and conservation activities’, is authored by H. Terashima and colleagues. This article describes a field survey that was conducted by the authors in Vanuatu in 2017 for estimating the density of green snail on transplantation sites and surrounding areas. It then describes the procedures and gives results of a questionnaire survey that was conducted in order to understand the motives of villagers who participated in the green snail transplantation and conservation activities in selected villages in north-western Efate Island and eastern Malakula Island. An awareness survey was also conducted in villages with no experience of these transplantation and conservation activities. Information was collected from target villagers using a questionnaire based on ‘Scheffe’s pairwise comparisons test’ to understand the most important motive for managing and conserving the green snail.
Kenneth Ruddle
Contents
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