Pacific Skipjack

The south-western Pacific is the only region in the world where all tuna stocks have a 'healthy' status. It supports the acknowledged best researched and managed tuna fishery on the planet. With skipjack tuna being the most important renewable natural resource in the region, the fishery is crucial to the economic and wider social wellbeing of Pacific Island peoples, who are now largely managing these resources for themselves.

Astonishingly, while many individuals, groups, organisations, institutions, and governments from around the world were involved in the establishment of this gigantic fishery, it came into being mainly through the vision and tenacious efforts of a single young Australian scientist, Dr. Bob Kearney.

In Pacific Skipjack, Kearney tells the story of how he crossed paths, and sometimes swords, with philanthropists, bankers, fishing executives, scientists, lawyers, government leaders and representatives from many nations, and even the Indonesian military, in personally designing, obtaining funding for, administering, and demonstrating the scientific and commercial value of his dream experiment, carried out across more than thirty million square kilometres of ocean.