266 



Abstract — Nearshore fisheries in 

 the tropical Pacific play an impor- 

 tant role, both culturally and as a 

 reliable source of food security, but 

 often remain under-reported in sta- 

 tistics, leading to undervaluation of 

 their importance to communities. We 

 re-estimated nonpelagic catches for 

 Guam and the Commonwealth of the 

 Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), 

 and summarize previous work for 

 American Samoa for 1950-2002. For 

 all islands combined, catches declined 

 by 77'7f , contrasting with increasing 

 trends indicated by reported data. For 

 individual island entities, re-estima- 

 tion suggested declines of 86%, 54%, 

 and 79% for Guam, CNMI, and Ameri- 

 can Samoa, respectively. Except for 

 Guam, reported data primarily repre- 

 sented commercial catches, and hence 

 under-represented contributions by 

 subsistence and recreational fisheries. 

 Guam's consistent use of creel surveys 

 for data collection resulted in the most 

 reliable reported catches for any of the 

 islands considered. Our re-estimation 

 makes the scale of under-reporting of 

 total catches evident, and provides 

 valuable baselines of likely historic 

 patterns in fisheries catches. 



Re-estimation of small-scale fishery catches 

 for U.S. flag-associated island areas 

 in the western Pacific: the last 50 years 



Dirk Zeller (contact author)^ 

 Shawn Booth^ 

 Gerald Davis^ 

 Daniel Pauly^ 



Email address (lor D. Zeller): d.zeller@fishenes.ubc-ca 



' Fisheries Centre 

 2202 Mam Mall 

 University of British Columbia 

 Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, Canada 



^ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admninistration 

 National Manne Fisheries Service 

 1601 Kapiolani Blvd. 

 Honolulu, Havuaii 96814-4700 



Manuscript submitted 26 June 2006 

 to the Scientific Editor. 



Manuscript approved for publication 

 17 October 2006 by the Scientific Editor. 



Fish. Bull. 105:266-277 (2007). 



Small-scale nearshore fisheries in the 

 tropical Pacific are of fundamental 

 importance for subsistence, social and 

 cultural purposes, in addition to pro- 

 viding food, trade, and recreational 

 resources (e.g., Dalzell et al., 1996). 

 These fisheries commonly play a vital 

 role in providing a secure supply of 

 protein on many Pacific Islands. Yet, 

 catches for the small-scale fisher- 

 ies in these islands are typically not 

 estimated by the fisheries agencies. 

 This lack of data on estimated catch 

 applies especially to the non-com- 

 mercial sectors (e.g., subsistence and 

 recreational) and is generally justi- 

 fied by real or perceived difficulties 

 and costs associated with quantifica- 

 tion of these very spatially dispersed 

 fisheries. Hence, extractions of these 

 marine resources are usually under- 

 estimated in official statistics, as are 

 their economic and social importance 

 (Zeller et al., 2006b). 



An approach to retroactively esti- 

 mate catches in cases where reliable 

 time series data are lacking applies a 

 "re-estimation" approach to approxi- 

 mate historic catch time series (Zeller 

 et al., 2006a). Such an approach typi- 

 cally requires subjective inferences 

 and interpolations. This approach is 

 justified, despite data uncertainties, 



given the less acceptable alternative 

 outcome, namely that subsequent us- 

 ers of the available data will inter- 

 pret nonreported or missing data as 

 zero catches. 



Without accounting for total catch- 

 es from all sectors, it is not possible 

 to obtain any comprehensive mea- 

 sure of the formal and informal eco- 

 nomic value of these resources, or 

 of the risks excessive fishing may 

 represent to an island entity. The 

 lack of these two measures is of 

 concern, given that human popula- 

 tion growth rates in many Pacific 

 island countries are high and natu- 

 ral resources in these islands are 

 limited. Furthermore, the growing 

 shift from predominantly subsis- 

 tence to market-based cash-oriented 

 economies, as well as increasing de- 

 velopment since World War II, has 

 contributed to declines in coastal 

 marine resources. Although local- 

 ized overfishing may be responsible 

 for some of these observed declines, 

 anthropogenic factors such as coast- 

 al development, pollution, and poor 

 watershed management have likely 

 also contributed to the degradation 

 and reduction of coastal habitat and 

 in the productivity of the resource 

 (Friedlander and DeMartini, 2002). 



