Please follow this link to download a short manual on rabbitfish capture and farming. 

Starting in 2015 MERIP began researching the potential for sustainable capture-based aquaculture of rabbitfishes, a favored food in the Pacific Islands. Young rabbitfishes are known to settle from the ocean by their millions on seagrass and mangrove areas all over the Pacific. This phenomenon is legendary in many places. Due to the huge numbers of fish that settle every year, most of them die from starvation before they find a place to live on the reef, offering an opportunity for sustainable capture of some of the rabbitfish for grow-out in aquaculture cages before they die off. Research at MERIP has shown that as many as 200 million might settle in Pohnpei in just one month, at certain times of the year. Settlement in Pohnpei takes place during the months of April through September. 

Fish are captured using nets on the seagrass beds or mangrove fringes around Pohnpei and are stocked into cages where they are fed a formulated fish feed. Four species of rabbitfishes have shown to have a high potential for aquaculture. Starting in 2021 commercial-scale pilot projects have started in three communities in Pohnpei and three communities in Kosrae to demonstrate the viability of this type of aquaculture for rural communities in Micronesia.

© USAID’s Pacific American Climate Fund / Matt Abbott