The fight over Palau's oceans

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We travel to the tiny pacific nation which wants to shrink its marine sanctuary, and open it up once more to commercial fishing.

The President says it’s costing too much in lost revenue, when Palauans are already struggling.

But opponents say this goes against Palau's conservationist ethos.

So today we're asking - can conservation and commerce, co-exist?

Produced and presented by Frey Lindsay

(Image: The National Geographic Pristine Seas research vessel the Argo, in the Pacific Ocean East of Palau. Credit: Frey Lindsay)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Frey Lindsay.
0:08.1	I'm at the Tori-Tori Japanese restaurant in Coror. That's the main island of Palau, an archipelago
0:13.8	nation in the Western Pacific Ocean. Population 18,000. Can I please get the sashimi of the day?
0:20.9	Yoko Morisaki is the head manager here at Tori Tori. She took 18,000. Can I please get the sashimi of the day? Okay.
0:21.5	Yoko Morisaki is the head manager here at Tori Tori.
0:24.6	She took me through what's on my plate.
0:26.6	We have a salt fish.
0:29.5	Yeah.
0:29.9	And then we have a grouper.
0:31.6	And then this is a giant clam.
0:33.4	And then this is salmon.
0:34.5	And will all of this have been caught locally?
0:37.0	Sorry, the samo is important.
0:39.2	Important.
0:39.7	And then the grouper, their group have a season.
0:43.7	So the government of Palau, they're protecting groupers.
0:48.2	They close the season, the time groupers spawning.
0:52.9	So it's kind of a sustainability conservation thing.
0:55.5	Yes, yes. And that's what we're talking about today here on Business Daily. Sustainability and
1:00.6	conservation in Palau's waters. In particular, the impact on fishing. Fishing is culturally very important.
1:07.0	It's how we define ourselves. We are ocean people. We're going to look at the controversy around a vast area of ocean.
1:13.6	Palau currently protects from commercial use, but that might soon be up for grabs once again.
	...

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