ACP-EU Training

  Newsletter: ACP-EU Project News 98/01

ACP-EU Fisheries and Biodiversity Project

Dear Colleagues

The ACP-EU project "Strengthening Fisheries and Biodiversity Management in ACP countries" has started its second year. We can look back at a couple of achievements and, of course, also at a few things that did not work out as expected, but that’s life. All in all, we think the project is well on track.

Highlight of the past year was our training course in Noumea, New Caledonia, where this project’s ideas and concepts were put on test for the first time. We enjoyed it, primarily because we had a good group of participants, who worked really hard to make this course a success.

Other courses will follow soon, where we hope to meet similarly enthusiastic people. But we also have been wondering, how we could further develop these contacts. (We are well aware of the difference between the focussed atmosphere of a training course and the distractions of duties back home!) Out of this has come the idea for a regular electronic News Letter. In a rather informal way, it will keep you up-to-date on what the Project Team is doing, but also what you and your colleagues are doing. So, let us hear from you!! Whether you just got married, or discovered a new fish species, or are craving for finding a solution to a certain (preferably scientific, not marital) problem: just write us, and we will include it with the next News Letter. It, thus, will reach your colleagues around the world, including the members of the Project’s Steering Committee. All of them will be interested to learn more about you and one of them might happen to have the answer to your problem.

We will also use this occasion to pass on any information we come across that we think might be useful to you in the context of this project. But still, the liveliness of this News Letter will largely depend on your contributions.

And here comes the first task, where you can show your creativity: what would you like this News Letter to be called? We are looking for a catchy name.

So much for the general introduction. The next one will be much shorter, promised. We hope you find some of the items included below interesting. We are looking forward to receiving your comments, suggestions, and criticisms. Either as letter, fax (+632 8163183) or e-mail (m.vakily@cgnet.com).

Best regards

The FishBase Team

News from the FishBase Team

Software development progress

Maria Lourdes ‘Deng’ Palomares attended a two-day seminar (26-27 February) entitled Software Testing & Quality Assurance at Micro Tek Education Center, San Francisco, CA.

Hands on fish taxonomy for Emily

Emily Capuli spent three weeks at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum Honolulu, Hawaii, helping to organize the fish specimens from Tonga, collected in 1983 by Dr. John E. Randall. Emily learned some museum management and preservation techniques from Dr. Arnold Suzumoto, the collection’s manager of the museum. Identification of some of the samples was also done under the supervision of Dr. Randall.

News from the Colleagues

Pacific Node

Kalo Pakoa from the Fisheries Department in Vanuatu submitted a manuscript on "Vital statistics of marine fishes of Vanuatu", in which he summarized available information on depth distribution, spawning season, growth, mortality and length-weight relationships for 38 marine species of Vanuatu. This paper has been edited and is now ready for publication in NAGA, the ICLARM Quarterly.

Petelo Ioane from the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, Samoa, attended a workshop on the Strengthening and Collecting of Environment Statistics for Samoa.

Antonio Mulipola, Fisheries Division, Samoa, also attended this workshop and presented a paper on fisheries statistics. He used this occasion to demonstrate the use of FishBase as one of the tools to develop fisheries statistics databases. Unfortunately, his Internet provider went out of business. While we are looking into a way to put him back on e-mail, use the fax (+685 24292) if you want to contact him.

During a recent visit to ICLARM’s Coastal Aquaculture Center in the Solomons, our DDG Dr. Peter Gardiner happened to meet Edwin Oreihaka from the Fisheries Division, who spoke in very positive terms about his experience of the Pacific training course and how much he especially enjoyed Daniel Pauly's lectures. Nice to hear!

Milika Naqasima, University of the South Pacific, Fiji, is now planning to do her postgraduate studies in the UK, but will be staying with the University in Fiji for most of this year. She will be teaching her students concepts and use of FishBase during this semester! She will also attend an instructors course on coral reef monitoring methods, in Townsville, with the view of then being used as a resource person in the region conducting national and regional workshops. So, why not start to plan for more similar workshops? Those of you who attended the Noumea course will probably all agree that she will make a good resource person!

Lilian Sauni apparently has taken leave from the Fisheries Department in Tuvalu and is now pursuing an MSc at USP in Fiji.

Gerald Billings has left Greenpeace and has re-joined the Fisheries Department in Fiji, where he works in Krishna Swamy’s Section. Thus, his e-mail address is no longer valid, better use the FD’s Fax number (+679 361184) if you want to contact him.

Tim Adams, Director of the Fisheries Programme at the South Pacific Commission, Noumea, and acting training coordinator for the Pacific is presently assembling the necessary funds to employ staff for a vacant position at SPC. The selected person then will also be in charge of this project’s activities in the region.

Caribbean Node

The next training course is planned to take place in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, May 4 to 15. However, the regional node itself will be located in Belize.

Southern Africa Node

The MoU with the Ministry of Fisheries in Windhoek, Namibia, has been signed and our Steering Committee Member Dr. Ben van Zyl is identifying suitable persons for the position of training coordinators.

Information section

For those of you who are interested in topics related to biodiversity (who isn’t), here is the way to subscribe to BIODIV CONV, a special "list-server" (or electronic mailing list) on the Internet devoted specifically to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its effective implementation. (A list-server is simply an automated mechanism that uses e-mail addresses to disseminate information over the Internet to large numbers of people throughout the world.)

We found lots of interesting news and ideas covered at a highly professional level in the contributions one regularly receives as e-mail through this list-server.

If you have e-mail access you can join this network by sending a mail to <Majordomo@igc.org> with ONLY the following command in the body of your e-mail message:

subscribe biodiv-conv <your e-mail address>, e.g.:

subscribe biodiv-conv m.vakily@cgnet.com

Subsequently you will receive a message, which will ask you to confirm your subscription, and then you are on the list.

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