Table 4. Villager perceptions of reef change across 12 interviews.

Interview #	Average Years in Village	Perceptions of Reef Dynamics
1	58	Populations of kabatia, kawakawa and ululoa have decreased. Populations of balagi, nuqa, dridri, and ulavi have increased; interviewee perceived these as coming from outside the reef. Interviewee has seen no change in her octopus catch because she is an expert octopus fisherwoman and knows where the breeding ground is.
2	49	Nuru have disappeared and inshore corals are mostly dead. Fish abundance has decreased. In particular, kawakawa and ose have decreased in abundance and become smaller.
3	50	Varivoce and kawakawa have become harder to find.
4	52	Boxfish and sea prawns have become hard to find.
5	62	Nuqa is hard to find. Sea crabs and sea prawns aren't abundant.
6	66	Fish abundance has decreased.
7	34	Fish size has decreased. Toto have disappeared. There used to be lots of kalia, but now they are scarce. Octopus are smaller and scarcer: “Before, they used to catch eight, nine sometimes, but now—you can just catch two, three.” Balagi and ogo are plentiful. It's still possible to catch large kawakawa, but fishers have to go outside the reef.
8	More than 30	Fish abundance and size have decreased. Villagers have to go farther outside the reef to go fishing and put in more effort to catch the same amount of fish.
9	52	Octopus have become scarce.
10	About 2	Fish have decreased in abundance. Kanace, vonu, and kawakawaloa used to be more abundant and easier to catch close to shore when the interviewee was growing up in Nagigi (about 30 years ago).
11	60	Fish don't come in close to the shore anymore, so they're harder to catch. Nuru are hard to find and the coral is mostly dead. Fish are smaller. Ogo and snapper in particular don't come in close to the shore. Saqa, saku, yawa, vilu, vonu, vasua, and octopus are scarce.
12		Varivoce are scarce. In 1998, Fiji had a very hot season that noticeably raised the temperature of the ocean, causing the coral to die. Since then the coral has been recovering from that event. There is a quarry on Nagigi Creek upstream from the village that flushes sediment and waste down to the shore, killing the coral. A government research station along the creek uses weedkiller, which travels down to the sea when it rains and kills the coral. In 2001, the village held a traditional 3-month tabu (fishing moratorium) to honor the memory of a chief who had died.

See Table S1 for translations of Fijian species names.