Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands is the third largest archipelago in the South Pacific, comprising a total of 992 islands, with scattered in a chain in a south-easterly direction from Papua New Guinea. The bulk of the land area comprises seven large volcanic islands which form a double chain running from northwest to southwest and converging on the island of Makira. The Santa Crus Islands (Temotu Province) are a second group of three larger volcanic islands lying to the east, and separated from the main archipelago of the country by the 6000m deep Torres Trench.

The coastal marine ecosystem of the Solomon Islands includes wide areas still largely unimpacted by human activities, although there are also areas where such pressures are large and increasing. The islands have one of the fastest population growth rates in the world, and 86 percent of the people are rural. Dependence on coastal marine ecosystems for protein remains high and subsistence fishing is widespread.

Southeasterly trade winds (Ara) blow from May through to October and the northwesterly monsoon winds (Koburu) blow from December until March.

Coral reefs are mainly fringing and intermittent around all of the islands. Seagrass meadows are a significant coastal habitat of the Solomon Islands Seagrasses are a functional grouping referring to vascular flowering plants, which grow fully submerged and rooted in soft bottom estuarine and marine environments. In the Solomon Islands, they are found in habitats extending from the intertidal to subtidal, along mangrove coastlines, estuaries, shallow embayments, as well as coral-reef, inter-reef and offshore island situations.