A Sea of Connections: Valuing Reef Passages in the South Pacific Region – SOCPacific2R

SOCPacific2R explores reef passages across diverse scales, dimensions and knowledge systems. With a main geographical focus on Fiji and New Caledonia, this project involves empirical research combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, at the intersection of social and natural sciences, and enhancing local practices, values and knowledges. This grounded research builds on various methods, including participatory mapping, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, drawings made by both children and adults, participant observation, and underwater videos.

At the end of the first 18 months of the project (February 2026), our main research results can be viewed via these visual outcomes:

- A prototype WebMap of reef passages in Fiji, New Caledonia and French Polynesia, which displays important spatial information about reef passages, and which will be supplemented by expert feedback and field data by the end of the project 2027: socpacific2r.github.io/ReefPassages/

- Two StoryMaps, respectively offering an insight into how SOCPacific2R gradually took root and shape on Ovalau Island, Fiji, and presenting the collective results of research conducted in three villages and three reef passages around this island:
1- Reef Passages in a Sea of Connections: A visual talanoa of a field trip to Ovalau from the 22nd of September until the 11th of October 2025, storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/caa7610695014f8aa04ac6b915d1829e (October 2025).
2- Voices from the Daveta: Local Knowledge, Marine Biodiversity, and Customary Governance of Ovalau’s Reef Passages, storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b6ad56a68e8148828767883cdf2b6e2b (February 2026).

The second half of the project (from February 2026 onwards) will be devoted to conducting further studies in Fiji, in particular on Moturiki Island and in the Rewa Province, while developing research work in New Caledonia, in study sites to be defined in February-March 2026 through multi-stakeholder workshops in the South and North Provinces. These workshops are part of a range of activities and events aiming to establish a participatory science-society-policy dialogue around the sustainable and desirable futures of reef passages in Fiji and New Caledonia. This dialogue will ensure that the data ‘supplied’ by the project are best aligned with the dynamic social and policy ‘demand’ in both countries.

All our scientific production is avalailable on the project website: socpacific.link/outcomes/

The United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 14 – Life below water – aims at conserving and sustainably using the oceans, which represent 70% of the Earth’s surface. This goal is connected to the global target to expand protected areas to 30% of the planet by 2030, focusing on areas that are particularly important for biodiversity, such as coral reefs, on which people living in coastal areas depend to survive. This is particularly the case for New Caledonia and Fiji – two archipelagos that are located in the Pacific Ocean – where most of the population lives in coastal areas and relies on some of the largest barrier reefs in the world. Pacific Island countries and territories – in particular their Indigenous peoples who see themselves as the custodians of the ocean for the general good, their sovereign rights, and their holistic knowledge – are increasingly recognized as integral for achieving such ambitious conservation objectives.
The reef passages connecting coastal waters and the open ocean are known as outstanding hotspots of biodiversity and productivity. Hence, they are of multifaceted significance for the overall health of coral reef ecosystems. SOCPacific2R explores these social-ecological ‘keystone places’ and ‘communication zones’ that have hardly been investigated by natural and social sciences. Through its empirical focus on New Caledonia and Fiji, and based on a trusted and interdisciplinary French-German-Pacific partnership, the project aims at:
1. Conducting a transdisciplinary study of reef passages as under-researched features of social-ecological coral reef systems that constitute complex, interconnected, and dynamic assemblages of living and non-living, dwelling and transiting, entities that interact with each other;
2. Documenting both area-based and other management and conservation arrangements applied to reef passages, including pros and cons that local stakeholder groups identify;
3. Establishing a participatory science-society-policy dialogue informed by social-ecological studies, Oceanian socio-cosmologies and sovereignties, and governance norms in/for the management and conservation of reef passages.
Through these interrelated objectives and associated capacity-building components, SOCPacific2R will both embrace and feed the vision of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and will facilitate the integration of reef passages in future marine/ocean policy and practice. It will provide holders of customary rights, policy-makers and other stakeholders with evidence-based research and exchange fora to empower them for the joint management and conservation of reef passages. Therefore, this project will integrate both a conventional and a more-than-human approach to ethnography into interdisciplinary dialogues, while using methods and dialogic spaces to more directly and actively engage various stakeholder groups throughout the research process.