Photo by Mauritius Images GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo. Retrieved from hakaimagazine.com

Excerpt from hakaimagazine.com

The success of the rāhui in Rapa and on other islands, such as Maïao, quickly caught on elsewhere in Polynesia. In Tahiti, a marine rāhui was created in 2014 in Teahupoo in the southwest region of the island. Within just a few years, researchers from the Center for Insular Research and Environmental Observatory (CRIOBE) in Moorea, French Polynesia, found that there was a significant increase in biomass in the rāhui zone—the average fish biomass was eight to 10 times higher than outside the rāhui.

Tamatoa Bambridge is a rāhui specialist and research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He also led the scientific team monitoring the rāhui at Teahupoo and recalls the rise in biodiversity in 2017 as “incredible.” They discovered fish in the rāhui that were more than seven years old, attracted by the availability of food in the zone. Before the rāhui, overfishing meant that fish of that age and size were incredibly rare.

Today, French Polynesia has an estimated 20 or so rāhui on seven islands, and more are planned. Some, like Teahupoo, have seen great success, though Bambridge is quick to point out that many rāhui in the Pacific fail because of a lack of proper planning at the outset for the community to decide on techniques and limits they all agree on. Some rāhui even result in a notable decrease in fish biomass after the rāhui is lifted and fishing resumes: the fish increase at first, but then they become overfished.