Traditional Fishing Techniques in the Marshall Islands (Alele Report 2004/3)

Petrosian-Husa, Carmen

From introduction: "The purpose of this report was twofold. The first was to identify the records on traditional Marshallese fishing techniques and to present these findings. The second was to produce an educative booklet, which can be used in schools. Some of the described fishing practices are still practiced, some not, some knowledge is still common, some has been forgotten. Therefore, the following report has been written in the past tense in order to give a vivid picture of the way fishing was conducted and experienced in pre-colonial times. As the author of this report is not a high school teacher by profession the second objective, to produce an educative booklet, was 'outsourced' to Patricia Schmidt McDonald, an education consultant She will (free of charge) transcribe the findings of this report as reading material for junior high school students and attach a teacher's guideline how to implement this reading material into their curriculum and how to complement it with the sources available... The ethnographer, being a woman and not a 'fisherwoman' herself, had to get accustomed with general fishing terms and technologies in order to understand and comprehend the Marshallese concept of fishing and its ingenuity. This was only accomplished on a pure theoretical basis. Besides the extensive background research of texts of mostly Gennan provenience it was not possible to visit more outer islands and record their fishing traditions as well as their views and opinions about traditional fishing. Also concerning information about ciguatera, case studies and treatments, it was not possible to get more information from the hospital in Majuro. Finally not much data concerning modern fishing techniques and many related topics have been included, thus, this report is far from complete and a long term and more detailed study should be encouraged. None of the sources from the German colonial time deals exclusively with fishing. But fishing techniques, taboos and tools are often mentioned. After WWII when several American anthropologists came to the Marshalls to do research, fishing was a topic of great interest for them. Some topics of this report have been mentioned in the Historic Preservation Preliminary Reports of the Anthropological Surveys of Arno and Wotho Atoll." Project funding was provided in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant administered by the Marshall Islands Historic Preservation Office and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Traditional Fishing Techniques in the Marshall Islands (Alele Report 2004/3)

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