Shellfish Gathering and Conservation on Low Coral Islands: Kiribati Perspectives

ABSTRACT

Low coral island societies in the Pacific have always lived in a precarious environment. Consequently, some writers have stated that people living on atolls and table reefs must have devised effective conservation strategies. Predictions from three optimal foraging models in ethnographic contexts (patch choice, patch sampling, and risk) applied to shellfish gathering in Kiribati, Micronesia, do not support the assumption that human foragers are motivated by a desire to conserve resources. While historical ecology data are sparse, there is little to indicate that coral islanders in the past needed to practice conservation of marine resources, including shellfish.