Popular Fisheries

Officer Leaves

From a Noumea Correspondent he South Pacific Commission's vies officer, Mr. H. van Pel, has y ,ned his position for reasons of th and returned to Holland with wife in June.

R. VAN PEL, known as “Bert”, has been extremely popular in 1 Caledonia—one of the most alar SPC officers ever to serve, in —and his resignation is a great spointment. It will naturally be all over the Pacific, for in his n years as SPC fisheries officer he visited every South Pacific Terri to study its fishing problems, dministrations have found his re -5 most valuable, and several have )ted them as blueprints in estab ng their own enterprises, e has always been a very hard dng officer, but he had not en d the best of health for some , so his decision was not com ly unexpected.

Since 1954 r. van Pel took up his post in 1954, his main duties being to urage the adoption in the Pacific lore up-to-date methods of catch and marketing fish. He was

;ly responsible for introducing

farming to the Pacific and re d fingerlings of tilapia in ponds lakes in many territories. j had the main responsibility for •fishing the boat building course in progress in Auki in the BSIP, the nine week fisheries course h will open at Tulagi in August, leveloped the basic design of the t. fishing cutter, of which three being built at Auki for the ties training centre at Tulagi.

One of the reasons for Mr. van Pel’s popularity in the South Seas was undoubtedly the fact that he was a practical fisherman. He was once a North Sea trawler skipper.

He married his New Caledonian born wife in Noumea last year. She was Miss Marthe Schmidt, daughter of a New Caledonia pioneer family.

Mr. Edward Alfred Charles Cham bers, who was chairman of the 1954 committee of inquiry into living costs and hours of work for the P-NG Public Service, has been appointed Commonwealth Public Service Arbitrator.

and Mrs. van Pel, photographed in Noumea ly after their marriage a few months ago.

Photo: Fred Dunn