Transcript
Vanuatu's Ministry of Fisheries says it will re-open marine protected areas to fishing and lift a ban on hunting turtles to help relieve the food crisis in the country after Cyclone Pam's destruction of the agricultural and fisheries sector.
David Tosul told our correspondent Hilaire Bule the special measure will last for three to four months until people's gardens recover and they can get back on their feet.
DAVID TOSUL: We are now working with the fisheries department to put in place some of the procedures that can be followed in moving into some of this type of area to allow people to harvest some of the fisheries in this type of area. For example, protected species (indecipherable). We need to manage these marine resources properly because marine resources are scarce and very few in numbers, so we have to put into place some of the practices that people can harvest, and also in areas that we never fished before or harvest. We need to open this up so people can have access to these areas. Just to have sources for the protein, the food.
HILAIRE BULE: How long can this message last for?
DT: Well, from the agriculture expertise we know that to help our people recover we need about three to four months for people to recover, like the island cabbage and also some of the very protein-rich... like beans and all this. They only take about two to three months to be harvested and after this crop... we have already distributed some of these seeds and we will wait for these seeds. After three months we can close lal these areas and then people can return back to their normal food.
HB: I understand that some of the aquaculture community projects have been destroyed. What is the Vanuatu government doing to rebuild the aquaculture?
DT: Some of these aquaculture projects, like one of the biggest oneson Devil's Point, it was destroyed also. The owner now is in Fiji, we don't know the details of the story - is he going to rebuild this project? But for the small aquaculture projects we are planning now for the Port Vila area. We decided that maybe we should have back-up aquaculture and this can also develop in the provincial areas like Blacksands and other areas. And also back in the rural, people should go back to their normal ways of putting back their aquaculture projects.
