In pelagic longline, deploying the gear such that the depth of the hook is the same as that of the target fish is important to improve the fishing performance and selectivity. In this study, the depth of the tuna longline hook was estimated using the mass-spring model, catenary curve method, and secretariat of the pacific commission Pythagorean method in order to improve the performance of the longline gear in Fiji. The former two methods were estimated to be relatively accurate, and the latter showed a large error. Further, the mass-spring model accounted for the influence of tidal current in the ocean, which was found to be appropriate for use in field trials.

Five species of Blastobasis are described: Blastobasis murcyae, B. moffetti, B. christou, B. orladelaneae from New Caledonia and B. lososi from Fiji Islands. These descriptions represent, for the first time, a report of Blastobasinae (Coleophoridae) on these islands. Photographs of the imagos, illustrations of wing venation, male and female genitalia are provided as available.

Tourism is often considered as one of the main industries to promote development and modernization in small South Pacific islands countries. In Fiji, this was recognized in the 1960s, and resulted in large-scale resort based tourism development in coastal areas. While tourism has obvious advantages to the economy, a lot of problems such as exclusive foreign control of the main hotels and resorts, considerable overseas leakage of earnings, the limited participation by indigenous resource owners, and localized environmental damages to reefs and mangroves are emerging. For sustainable tourism development, it is needed to set growth objectives and targets for tourism in terms of benefits to Fiji, and to concentrate support on ‘Rural Tourism’ such as community-based tourism that have lower leakage and put more into local economies. Through case study in this paper, to develop rural tourism at the local level, several recommendations are as follows: 1) to introduce various rural tourism programs such as experiencing Fiji’s traditional culture, participating in activities, picking fruits and harvesting agro-products, 2) to enhance aggressive promotion and marketing strategies, 3) to build the capacity of local communities for improving the quality of tourism services, and 4) to provide the infrastructure for tourism business such as road accessing, water supply and disaster prevention.