Fishing School

Sp Commission Project

for Islanders

Twenty-five south Pacific Islanders will receive practical training in a fisheries course to be held at Noumea, said the Secretary-General of the South Pacific Commission (Dr. Ralph Clairon Bedell) at the Research Council meeting at Noumea in

i June.

The course, designed to improve ; fishing methods and to develop fisheries resources, will be spon sored jointly by the South Pacific Commission and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Both organisations, said Dr.

Bedell, are anxious to see fisheries more fully used as a means of tetter nutritional standards for Islands peoples.

Islanders at the fisheries school will study such subjects as the use of mechanised small boats; Improved gear and fishing methods; processing, storing and marketing of fish, and control of harmful practices like dynamiting and

I poisoning.

They will learn elementary navigation and chart-reading and 1 the principles of boat-building, and > will acquire a working knowledge i of marine engines.

AN important part of the training will relate to fish-farming— transferring fish from fresh and brackish water into ponds and rivers, building dykes and sluices and cultivating pearl oysters and other molluscs.

Much of the training will take place at sea. A fisheries research vessel has been lent by the French Institute of Oceania, which was linked by Dr. Bedell with FAO in an expression of warm appreciation.

The students will live at the Pentagon building at South Pacific Commission headquarters.

Speaking at the Research Council meeting, Dr. Cecil Miles, secretary of the Indo-Pacific Fisheries Council, said that if FAO had not been prominent in the South Pacific region, it was because the South Pacific Commission was engaged most effectively in those functions which were being performed by FAO in other under-developed parts of the world.

Mr. hubertus van pel, Fisheries Officer of the Com mission, said that in the Cook Islands he had transplanted 320 black-lipped mother-of-pearl shells

lagoon Manihikl t 0 Rakahanga

He had selected medium sizes as older oysters would not withstand the journey. A tank has since made in Rarotonga to carry «00 pearl oysters in a single voyage.

Black-lipped pearl, although less valuable than the gold-lipped variety, brings about £stg.4oo a ton.

A boat with one diver takes from 100 to 300 shells in a day.

Mr. van Pel said that overfishing could become a serious economic problem in French Oceania, where 25 lagoons have already been stripped of shell. Unless they were replenished, these lagoons would become a “graveyard.”

The transplanted Manihiki oysters had been deposited in an area covered with stones and dead coral, but the intention was to put collectors in the lagoon.

MR. VAN PEL advised on fish farming in Western Samoa and Tonga, adding that in the

Cook; Islands he had found con u good that h e had established a fishpond and given 2M e i& e r S s.° n flSheri6S t 0 about new -*E on A he said > has been stocked with tilapia flown to the Cooks from Fiji.

Tilapia is a particularly good fish to use where fish-farming is a new idea. It is a strong, hardy fish making things easier for unskilled farmers—and it grows fast, so that results can be seen quickly As well as providing food, it shows promise as tuna-fishing bait.

Lt. G. P. Brown and 2 Lt. P J Burt, NZ Regiment, have been seconded to the Fiji Military Forces. J