Contact : Jérôme Aucan
With financial support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), the Pacific Community (SPC) has launched a project to help Pacific island countries set up pilot projects to monitor coastal fisheries and associated habitats to determine whether changes have occurred in the productivity of coastal fisheries, and if so, to what extent these changes are attributable to climate change.
In April 2010, SPC organized a workshop bringing together marine, fisheries and climate change specialists from the Pacific region. One of the objectives of this workshop was to determine a set of indicators suitable for long-term monitoring in Pacific island countries, and enabling the detection of climate change impacts on coastal fisheries.
One of the indicators proposed was the measurement of water temperature at 10 m depth, inside the lagoon and on the outer slope near the biological monitoring sites.
Consequently, in 2010, SPC purchased twelve RBR TR-1060 temperature loggers to equip 5 pilot sites (2 loggers per site), with a sampling frequency of 10 minutes, compatible with maintenance every 1-2 years.
Two recorders were deployed in 2010 in Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia). The other recorders were deployed during 2011 in the other pre-selected sites: Marshall Islands (Majuro), Papua New Guinea (Manus), Kiribati (Abaiang or Abemama), Tuvalu (Funafuti).