“Kuraora ia, aore nake kura mate koutou!” The shouts hit like a crashing wave. One minute, this was Jean-Pierre, mild mannered school headmaster with wonky glasses. Now he’s Jean-Pierre, feared warrior, defender of his homeland, against me, the threatening invader. I’m being welcomed, but do I come in peace? I take one look at his contorted face and decide, yes, I definitely do. Stepping forward gingerly, a mix of French and Polynesian words fall clumsily from my mouth, just enough to reveal my honourable intentions. With a nod from Jean-Pierre, I step back, having completed my role in this dramatic ceremony.

We’re on the small island of Anaa, part of French Polynesia, stood in a circle on a small patch of land that just about emerges above sea level (my shorts are still wet from wading through the rushing sea waters). In the middle of the circle is a rocky alter, a sacred space known as a marae. On one side, a small cavity in the ground has been left open. Inside are the skeletal remains of two fish, one pointed towards the lagoon at the centre of this atoll, the other pointed in the opposite direction, towards the restless and seemingly endless Pacific Ocean, to symbolise their annual migration between lagoon and ocean. The fish being visible is highly significant. It demonstrates the revival of a cultural tradition that just might be the island’s salvation.

The challenges facing small island communities are well documented. From social decline to severe environmental degradation, small islands have been hit hard by a barrage of social, economic and environmental problems. Depopulation is a common theme, as young people abandon their homes in search of education and/or employment opportunities, either on larger neighbouring islands, or further afield.

Dr Hinano Bagnis, a Tahitian lawyer and consultant, believes she has devised a plan to reinvigorate such dilapidated islands. She had a name for the project – the Island Initiative (www.theislandinitiative.com) – and, through her friendship with the late Sir Douglas Myers, a prominent New Zealand businessman, the financial support to make it happen. All she needed was a suitable testing ground.

“Anaa was a pilot site to demonstrate what we were trying to do, building a model that could be replicated,” she tells me, as we recline on comfy sofas in a hotel foyer on a typically warm Tahitian evening. The small coral atoll of Anaa — 300 miles to the east of Tahiti, in the middle of the Tuamoto island archipelago in French Polynesia — perfectly encapsulates the multitude of problems facing small island communities. The recent history of this island is almost entirely a story of decline. In 1960, there were at least 2,000 residents, but chronic economic problems saw villages gradually shrinking. When a powerful cyclone smashed through the island in 1983, many chose not to rebuild a life that was failing them, instead opting to pack up and move to Tahiti, or anywhere they felt would offer more opportunities. Anaa now has less than 500 residents — mainly employed in either fishing or copra (extracting the dried innards of coconuts by hand), both hard labour vocations — and a handful of ghost villages dotted around the central lagoon.

“The idea was to help the community be more self-sufficient, so it was always in our mind to look at fisheries,” explains Hinano. Unsurprisingly for a remote South Pacific island, fish are a huge part of Anaa’s culture, ever present in local diets, and vital to the island’s economy. “This is how they live, so you need to help them to get and maintain a sustainable fishery.”