Historical ecology of the Raja Ampat Archipelago, Papua Province, Indonesia

Description

This report presents a review of the status of marine resources of the Raja Ampat Archipelago, Papua Province, Indonesia based on narratives of early European expeditions in various museums and libraries in Europe and also local archives in Papua. More than 500 documents on the study area were identified and located in various museums in the Netherlands, the UK, and France, and at the University of British Columbia library. Some of these were available in electronic format and some were photocopied. Not all the documents were available for consultation and some were 'off limits', notably those in special and rare book collections. Of these 500 documents, 350 were obtained and more than 250 were processed (25,000 pages scanned), of which only 50% (in 900 pages of text or 4% of the total number of pages scanned) contained abundance observations and observations on the impact of the human population on the ecosystem within the geographic bounding box established at 2⁰ North and 2⁰ South between 127 and 132⁰ East. In general, these observations suggest: 1) a decline, of 50%, of the perceived occurrences of turtles, fish and invertebrates; 2) a general decline in the perception that turtles, fish and marine plants were abundant; 3) a sharp increase in the perception of populousness in coastal kampongs (i.e., villages); 4) a sharp decrease in the perception that marine resources are fished only for subsistence; 5) a decrease in the perception that marine resources are fished extensively; and 6) a slow increase in the perception that marine resources are fished for commercial purposes at medium and low levels of activity. These results corroborate those of data from independent sources of time series trends of catches of fresh fish, dried and salted fish, and shrimp as well as time series trends of exports of fish products, e.g., tripang, trassi, turtle shells, mollusk shells, crocodile skin, shark fins and jellyfishes. The data used for this exercise can be accessed through the 'Historic Expeditions and Scientific Surveys' link of the Sea Around Us Project website (www.seaaroundus.org). They will gradually be complemented with data from documents so far not accessed. The results of this study will feed into the ecological modelling of the Bird's Head functional seascape, a component of the Seascapes Program of Conservation International (www.conservation.org).

Subjects

Series Statement

• Fisheries Centre research reports -- v. 14, no. 7.

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