Patterns of marine harvest effort in southwestern New Georgia, Solomon Islands: resource management or optimal foraging?

Abstract

Numerous researchers in the field of maritime anthropology have accepted the notion that marine tenure institutions are cultural systems designed to conserve marine resources. This idea has attained wide acceptance without the development of an ecological model to account for the occurrence of conservation and/or depletion of resources. In this study, foraging theory is offered as an alternative theoretical framework to examine the diversity of human resource exploitation strategies in coastal ecosystems. The results generated by the foraging models are considered here in relation to their significance in linking ecological evolutionary approaches in anthropology with coastal resource management.