It’s 3:15 am. The engine of the first banana boat drones through the tropical darkness. “There’s going to be a lot more boats at the FAD this morning,” Kalntas predicts as he lays the two trolling rods and gas tank in the hull of his vessel.

The day after a big catch is sold, there are always more fishermen – the boys have been waiting for the yellowfin to return. They need to justify paying for fuel after many weeks without a single landing. It’s an hour ride to the fishing grounds 12 miles offshore of Lelepa. “Just you and me today. We’ve got to hope the fish come out again.” The engine fires and we push off the shore. We’ll make it by dawn, spilling phosphorescence out the wake of Kalntas’ 20 foot boat as we run.

Touching the sea is an everyday activity for the island of Lelepa, Vanuatu. A fleet of banana boats depart each morning. Their captains target high value yellowfin and skipjack tuna to sell to the nearby resorts and capital city restaurants of Port Vila. They fish around a series of buoys anchored by a 1,400-metre rope offshore of the island – a FAD or “Fish Aggregating Device,” which provides structure to attract small baitfish that draw the larger fish Kalntas and the other fishermen hope to catch. On a good day, his landings may amount to $1,500 USD.

It was not always this way. With access to fertile soils and a sense of abundance, the community’s livelihoods depended on land products and agriculture for generations. Many villages were nestled in the “bush,” and resources of the sea were saved for special occasions or temporary shortages of land foods. Nearshore reefs were governed by local chiefs, who placed tabus, or prohibitions, on the harvest of shell and finfish – except in the case of certain community gatherings, funerals, or weddings.

When cyclones struck the islands and temporarily reduced land resources, the villages would then turn to the sea and harvest the fish abundant on nearby reefs. There was little concern for harvesting those areas using spears, making fish traps, or even poisoning the reef – the intensive harvesting was typically shortlived as once the terrestrial biome recovered, people would return to the land.