PIMRIS Portal the one stop website for all Pacific marine fisheries
information
It will now take as much effort as pushing a
button for you to have access to a wealth of quality marine and
fisheries information from the Pacific. Gone are the days of having to
trawl through different websites and constant library visits as you
search for information on Pacific marine fisheries and environment. With
thanks to the cooperation and contribution of all regional agencies who
work in this area, the soon to be launched Pacific Islands Marine
Portal (http://www.pimrisportal.org ) has brought everything together in
the one website, making life a lot easier when it comes to seeking out
information on Pacific marine environment and fisheries.
PIMRIS,
the Pacific Islands Marine Resources Information System is a Pacific
network consisting of agencies from the Council of Regional
Organisations in the Pacific (CROP), it has been in operation for the
past two decades focusing on building capacity in knowledge management
in fisheries departments throughout the Pacific region. Taking it
a step further, PIMRIS has engaged in a new project in partnership with
the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange Programme
(IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of
UNESCO to provide an online gateway to all information available to the
marine resource sector in the Pacific.
The PIMRIS Portal is hosted by the IOC project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium as a service provided within the framework of its ODINPIMRIS project.
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The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)
was instrumental in developing the portal structure and identifying
resources and content to populate the portal and will continue to work
in partnership with University of the South Pacific, Secretariat of the
Pacific Community, Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission and
Forum Fisheries Agency to further develop the portal in 2010.
The
success of this project relies heavily upon the input and ownership of
the CROP agencies and partners. It calls upon the ongoing collaboration
between regional agencies and national fisheries departments and will
continue to do so in the future to ensure the information remains
current and the portal is active.
"PIMRIS is a collaborative
effort that is supported by all the Pacific Islands and their regional
organisations. It is a testament to the value and strength of
cooperation and partnership where the sum of the collective work is more
then the sum of its individual parts," said Dr Joeli Veitayaki, Head of
the Division of Marine Studies, USP.
In 2008 and 2009, funding
was provided by IODE to allow for several meetings in which the CROP
agencies and partners involved could come together to discuss how this
was going to work, and to develop the portal. The portal is hosted by
the Project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium.
The portal has
been designed so that it is user friendly and will be helpful to a wide
range of people. Policy makers will be able to visit it for data and
information at regional level; school children will be able to visit it
to for information for schools and those in the community will find it a
useful access point for generic information. It contains information
from the Pacific region and is available for use by all.
Our
Pacific marine environment faces great threats right now and the Year of
Biodiversity has raised once again important facts which we must face.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature notes that 6 marine
turtles out of 7 are all threatened with extinction, 75% of the world's
fisheries are fully or over exploited and one third of reef-building
corals around the world are threatened with extinction.
"We need
to act fast to secure and provide our people with the resources and
development activities that will allow them to have dignified and
successful lives while protecting the integrity and health of the
natural systems that support our lives," said Dr Joeli Veitayaki.
"The
best way to do that is to learn the lessons from the past and then use
our best science and technology to formulate and implement sustainable
development activities and resource management arrangements for use in
all of our communities and countries. For that challenge, we need to
have access to the best information we can get, which is what the PIMRIS
Portal offers."
Not only will there be a launch of the PIMRIS
portal in Fiji this week, but the acknowledgement of another information
project under this portal. The PIMRIS regional repository is about
ensuring Pacific islands countries and territories will be able to
provide preservation in digital format and better access to their
country documents. The Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa are
involved in a pilot project developing the capacity of each of the
country fisheries departments to manage their fisheries documents and to
allow each country to be able to upload national documents in digital
format to the regional repository.
The launch of the Pacific
Islands Marine Portal took place in the Marine Lecture Theatre at USP,
Suva, Fiji, from 2.00-3.00pm on Thursday, 25th of March 2010.
Notes: The University of the South Pacific (USP) through a
partnership between the Library and the Division of Marine Studies
coordinates PIMRIS activities. The PIMRIS Steering Committee consisting
of representatives of all CROP agencies and national fisheries &
marine resources departments serves as an advisory body on protocols for
these activities.
PIMRIS Contact point: PIMRIS Coordinator -
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Created on: Friday, 26 March 2010 10:44
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Last Updated on: Monday, 01 July 2013 12:20
