Pacific Skipjack

Description

The Pacific skipjack tuna is a remarkable fish. With nowhere to hide in the wide-open spaces of the Pacific, it is one of the fastest and most mobile fish in the world. It is also one of the quickest fish to reproduce, such that the largest tuna fishery in the world, co-managed by more than twenty Pacific island nations, can yield enormous catches of skipjack without threat to the well-being of the species. The south-western Pacific is the only region in the world where all tuna stocks have a ‘healthy’ status. It supports the acknowledged best researched and managed tuna fishery on the planet. With skipjack being the most important renewable natural resource in the region, the fishery is crucial to the economic and wider social wellbeing of Pacific Island peoples, who are now largely managing these resources for themselves.

Astonishingly, while many individuals, groups, organisations, institutions and governments from around the world were involved in the establishment of this gigantic fishery, it came to be successfully managed primarily through the vision and tenacious efforts of a single young Australian scientist, Dr Bob Kearney. In this book, Kearney tells the extraordinary, colourful story of how, beginning in Papua New Guinea at the start of the 1970s, he crossed paths, and sometimes swords, with philanthropists, bankers, fishing executives, scientists, lawyers, government leaders and representatives from many nations, and even the Indonesian military. Kearney personally designed, obtained funding for, administered, managed, and demonstrated the scientific and commercial value of his dream experiment, carried out across more than thirty million square kilometres of ocean.

Pacific Skipjack is co-published with ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research).