‘I want to take everything I’ve learnt back home’
THE Ɲrst PaciƝc islander to graduate with a doctoral degree in marine biology from Auckland University of Technology (AUT) says he wants to take everything he has learnt back to his “happy place…surrounded by water” and share with his people in Cook Islands.
Dr Antony Vavia, 28, graduated in Auckland on 1 August, and becoming only the second Cook Island Māori with a PhD in this Ɲeld - the other being Dr Teina Rongo, the chairperson of Kōrero o te ‘Ōrau’ and a well-known community leader.
Vavia’s research focuses on subsistence Ɲsheries in the PaciƝc with a case study of his island home of Mitiaro, the fourth largest island in the Cook Islands group.
He spent almost two years carrying out his investigation in Mitiaro during the COVID pandemic, which had posed some challenges with movement restrictions, including having to carefully Ɲx and preserve his samples before getting them to New Zealand for lab experiments.
He told RNZ PaciƝc completing his PhD was “a big day for my family and myself”.
“I have got a lot of gratitude to learn not only from a scientiƝc lens but from the Mitiaro people, from the papas (fathers), mamas (mothers), mapu (youth), rakavai (Ɲshermen),” he said.
Dr Vavia wanted to look at PaciƝc Island Ɲsheries because he believes with the way the world is becoming challenged - with threats of climate change, overƝshing, natural resource exploitation - there is a negative impact on food security, environmental, and health. But a lot of the focus is on the developed world.
“We have got millions of people throughout these coastal communities all across the PaciƝc, [and] across the globe, that rely on these Ɲsheries as an important food source, not only for physical sustenance, but as well as cultural sustenance too.”
He said the Cook Islands is surrounded by the ocean and it was “only natural for us to want to take care of that resource”.