Vavanga, Solomon Islands
On the southwest coast of Kolombangara Island lies Vavanga, a village where people's lives remain intimately intertwined with the reef.
Villagers fish on reef dropoffs, reef flats, passages and in mangroves, using a variety of traditional methods.
These include droplines to target deep-water fish, gill nets, spearing, throwline (casting a fishing line without a sinker to catch fish on the shallow reef flat), and towline by using a non-weighted fishing line with synthetic bait behind a canoe.
Local people speak Nduke, an Austronesian language, but pijin is also widely used. Kolombangara means the ‘water god’, a reference to the abudant supply of freshwater from the island's rivers.
Religion plays an important role in the daily life of the village's 100 or so people. Like most communities on Kolombangara, the Seventh Day Adventist church is followed in Vavanga.1
