# The gender of the fish: Problems with marine life and problems with society in Island Melanesia

Mark Collins

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Mark Collins. The gender of the fish: Problems with marine life and problems with society in Island Melanesia. European Society for Oceanists 2025 Conference, European Society for Oceanists, Jun 2025, Lucerne, Switzerland. hal-05135843

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<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
# THE GENDER OF THE FISH
## Problems with marine life and problems with society in Island Melanesia

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

Mark Collins

Research fellow in anthropology – University of St Andrews (Scotland)

Chercheur associé – Credo, Aix-Marseille Univ/CNRS/EHESS (France)

Thank you for the introduction, thank you to Kalissa Alexeyeff and Holly Wardlow for calling and coordinating this panel, for accepting this submission, and for bringing all these amazing people together. It's an honour and a privilege to be here today among you.
# THE GENDER OF THE FISH
## Problems with marine life and problems with society in Island Melanesia

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

The name I have used for this presentation is – as you will all have identified – a play on Marilyn Strathern’s famous 1988 title: *The Gender of the Gift, Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia*. I am not the first to have repurposed this title in such a way. In 2003, Mary Douglas published an article titled...
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

# The gender of the trout

MARY DOUGLAS

Literary gender is a funny thing. I don't mean grammatical gender, though that is peculiar enough in itself. I mean the informal gender that sometimes emerges in ordinary conversation or writing, like cars being feminine in the 1920s and ships still being feminine to this day. In this case it is about the gender of the trout in an elegant literary genre, English trout writing. A fly fisher friend warns me to remember that I am not speaking about northern England, Wales, Scotland, or Ireland. What I am going to say only applies to fishing writing for the English southern waters, especially the chalk streams;¹ and it applies to writing in the period from the 1880s up to and soon after World War II.

## Gender

In English, when we order fish in a restaurant we say "it" as for other neutral nouns. For example, "it" may be filleted, smoked, or grilled. Italian, French and German grammars have the trout in the feminine gender. Spanish makes a compromise: the noun is feminine for the live fish in the water, and neutral after it has been caught and become an inanimate object. But in this period, in English books and articles about country life and in fishing memoirs, a trout is generally given the masculine pronoun, "he" or "him," regardless of biological sex.

Grammar gives cues which may or may not restrict

metaphor. Let's assume that in French literature it would be

"The Gender of the Trout", in which she discusses the way English fishermen refer to trout as "she", a phenomenon she does not refer to so much as a "problem" but as "peculiar" and "a funny thing".

Here, I retain the term "problem" from Strathern's title, although what I wish to discuss is more a series of questions. I will be asking: how "ontological" considerations which associate certain characteristics with certain categories of living beings interact with the gendered aspects of social life?
“Ontological” partitioning of living beings
(both human and non-human)

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

Gendered partitioning of living beings
(both human and non-human)

In other words: how do ontology [NEXT]

and [NEXT]

Gender [NEXT]

“fit together”?
Introduction: Lavongai, gender, and
social organisation

But first, a word on the fieldwork site which this discussion will be drawn from.
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

Lavongai - or Lovongai according to one spelling variant – is a Papua New Guinea island, located in the northern part of the Bismarck Sea. It takes approximately 2 hours on a dinghy from Kavieng, the provincial capital of New Ireland Province, to get to Metevoe, on the south coast of Lavongai where I have been carrying out fieldwork since 2019.
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

The island's population, as far as we can tell from the ever imperfect PNG census, is distributed as shown on this map, and numbers around 30 000. What we can tell is that people live in small to medium villages located near the coast, or along the large rivers for the inland communities. They are primarily horticulturalists and fisher people. Hence almost everybody has daily interactions with marine or at least aquatic animals.
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

Metevoe is a coastal village that is located around a small bay, at the mouth of the river Voe which can be seen to the top left of this satellite photograph. The approximately 45 households are spread along the sandy coast, along a fringing coral reef that is also apparent here.
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>

Gender is one of the main ways in which Lavongai society is structured. I take the term gender – classically – to refer to the sociocultural allocation of differentiated attributes, characteristics and roles based upon a perceived association with biological sex, and which is used to justify hierarchies and other social arrangements. On Lavongai, gender operates a strong division of labour, and of spacial occupation, especially in residential areas. Here, for instance, on the occasion of a large feast, we see men preparing an outdoor semi-buried oven, an *umpilum*, and cutting up pork to be cooked in it.
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

At the same moment, women are cooking the tubers, taro and sweet potato in a different oven, an indoor overground one, an *imun*, where the lighting conditions make it harder to take decent photos.
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

Copyright Mark Collins 2021 - Made available under the CC BY-SA License

Here, for example, we can see that, during the feast that was shared the next day, the left ngapat, the line of banana leaves onto which food is shared, is reserved for women and children, while the right one is for men.
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /></figure>

Another structural aspect of Lavongai society is based around an exogamous matrilineal clan system. This plays a key role in land and marine tenure ship arrangements, and occasionally also in the organisation of labour. The later is the case especially in the context of mortuary ceremonies in which clan affiliation is a central consideration.

For instance, on this photograph taken during a kualava mortuary ceremony which occurs approximately a year after burial, we can see three fires burning, that will be used to destroy the personal effects of deceased people from three different clans. These should not be mixed in a single fire, and they will be interacted with in different ways by various people from specific clans.
# “Totemic” aspects of clan organisation

* Exogamous matriclans

* Each clan is named after a bird

* There is an association between the clan and the eponymous bird

The clan system evokes a totemic organisation: they are exogamous, each clan is named after a bird, and there is a strong association between the clan and the eponymous bird
A totemic ontology (Descola 2013) ?

* Continuity of interiority and physicality within the clan groups (bird and people)

* Discontinuity of interiority and physicality between different clans/birds

One of the questions I discussed at length in my PhD thesis is what ontological consequences this special relation between groups of people and birds has. I show that the way Lavongai people discuss the ties, similarities and dissimilarities between clanspeople and birds displays corresponds in some degree to what Philippe Descola terms a “totemic” ontology, but that the concept of “interiority” is fraught and hard to analyse here.
Interiority ???

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>

If we consider a clan grouping, this includes people, and a bird. For instance
[NEXT]

Nguma, crow [NEXT]

Manilava, eagle [NEXT]

and Vengevenge, hornbill [NEXT]

These display continuity of physicality within the clan grouping, [NEXT]

and discontinuity between them [NEXT]

Interiority [NEXT]

on the other hand, is a fraught concept here, difficult to delineate and
distinguish from physicality.
GENELOGY OF THE 12 TRIBES OF RINA I ATUKUL - of What is now known as
LAVONGAI -NEW HANOVER ISLAND
LENSI ANGELE

<table><thead><tr><th>Nos</th><th>CHIEF'S NAMES<br>OF EACH TRIBES</th><th>CLAN'S NAMES<br>OF EACH TRIBES</th><th>PLACE OF ORIGINAL<br>SETTLEMENT OF EACH TRIBES</th><th>CLAN'S ORIGINS OF<br>TRADITIONAL DANCES<br>OF EACH TRIBES</th><th>ROLE AND SPECIAL GIFTS<br>OF EACH TRIBES</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>LAPAN VAUVAU</td><td>MANILAVA</td><td>MAUNG</td><td>KATANGANGAMU</td><td>CHIEF CLAN- PASSINGAM -<br>Custodian of Authority over other Clans in initiating Unity</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>TOLOKVUAL</td><td>SUI</td><td>POTPOT</td><td>SUKUM</td><td>MASUNG -<br>Custodian of observing in decision making &amp; conduct of the society</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>AVANAKIT</td><td>VENGEVENGE</td><td>TIKILUM</td><td>SOROMBUAL</td><td>MALMALANG<br>Custodian of Faith in Action -&amp; observing assigned task in the society</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>LAPANDOSIM<br>LAPANDOSI PAI</td><td>SILAU</td><td>KATANGANGAMU</td><td>KAMBAI</td><td>MALURA SI LUK ALWA<br>Custodian in observing LOVE MAGIC in the society</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>TAISPETAU</td><td>VALUS</td><td>TANGAKASUNG</td><td>LAUN</td><td>MARAS<br>Custodian and observing of sorcery for good &amp; evil in the society</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>PAKUM</td><td>GILA</td><td>PATIVERUNGU</td><td>ANAMIS</td><td>TATAGAM - MARAMARAK<br>Custodian of observing and maintaining good deeds in the society</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>TIVIANOK</td><td>IANGA</td><td>PATILASING</td><td>LANGMANU</td><td>TANGATANGAI<br>Custodian of observing and maintaining the practice of Art Cra &amp; Culture in the society.</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>LAPLARMOT<br>LAPANDOSI IK</td><td>KANAI</td><td>PATIBAMALISA</td><td>MANTAPUR</td><td>SOG - FISHERMAN<br>Custodian of observing the practice of good seamanship on fishing adventures</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>UNGVALOVO</td><td>SIAVUN</td><td>LUVA</td><td>SASALA</td><td>MALANGAS<br>Custodian in observing the practice of guiding of the light through the sun in the society</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>VOKUINIPETAU</td><td>TIEN</td><td>PATIMALANG</td><td>VIAL</td><td>TUTUMAN<br>Custodian and observation of the word of Truth - practice of the True way of Life in the society -</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>PIRPIRIL</td><td>NGUMA</td><td>PATIVEONO</td><td>SUP</td><td>APOLOK VAP<br>Custodian of re-generating good leaders in the society.</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>SAVANGROLE</td><td>UK</td><td>RUALIS</td><td>WAU</td><td>LUAI ATUWAN<br>Custodian of observing the practice of living in peace &amp; harmony. (this Clan is not in existence due to non-re-generating</td></tr></tbody></table>

On Lavongai, this corresponds to a very clear local discourse, that has on occasion been documented in a systematic way locally, as here by Lensi Angele in the 2000s, with the second column, “clan’s name of each tribes” being composed of bird names.

Copyright Mark Collins 2025 - Made available under the CC BY-SA License
# The “gender” of the fish

Let us move on now to some “gender” considerations regarding marine animals.
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>

This is a fish which the people of Lavongai call Lenge. This particular
individual, as far as they are concerned, is a male.
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>

This, too, is a *lenge*. It is however, a female as far as the Lavongai are concerned.
<figure><img src="image_15.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_16.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_17.png" /></figure>

One of the reasons Lavongai people distinguish male from female lenge is that sometimes, the females can be found to have swollen abdomens, as this individual does, which the Lavongai interpret correctly as the gestation period. [NEXT]

This they know because they have witnessed these fish placing their spawn under rocks, such as this one. [NEXT]

And they also correctly identify the spawn as being what yields eggs, then larvae, then eventually new adults.
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>

They also readily distinguish between males and females in crab species, such as this mudcrab which is a female, for the Lavongai, recognisable by the colourful spots. They also do this for eels, even shrimp, and some shells. In other words: marine species are readily distinguished by sex.

But they are not just “sexed”, they are also gendered inasmuch as the males and females are said to have certain characteristics and behaviours by virtue of this property. Thus, Lavongai people make generalising statements about non humans, such as this one: females are more flamboyant, they have brighter colours, versus males that have more dull colours, because “females like to dress up”. Now, this is paradoxical for us as we know that males of many species put on “displays” to attract females and therefore they are the brighter, the more noticeable. Think of the peacock... But this is the local logic. And it is leaning towards a gendered partition, rather than simply one of sex.
# Gendered aspects of fishing (and more birds...)

What of the way people relate with these animals now?
# Men fishing

First, let us look at some men's fishing techniques.
<figure><img src="image_19.png" /></figure>

**Michael:** people know many ways of fishing, there is bottom fishing with a hook and line, trolling. This drawing shows the way to do bottom fishing. You can do that during the day, or at night too.

**Mark Collins:** tell me about bottom fishing.

**Ben Ottis:** we can catch **big fish** when we go bottom fishing.

We may begin with this drawing, by Michael Toreu Ottis, which represents a typically masculine technique. On the left is a translated transcription I made of the interview we recorded in which we discussed this drawing.
<figure><img src="image_20.png" /></figure>

The technique in question is this one, bottom fishing.
<figure><img src="image_21.png" /></figure>

Men paddle out a short distance from shore, and use
hooks and lines with a sinker to catch fish near the
seabed.
Copyright Mark Collins 2021

Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>

**Mark Collins:** (pointing at the birds) and this?

**Michael:** birds, indeed. This drawing that I made, it is the evening. There are frigate birds that are flying here and there. The sun is going down. The clouds are red, the sun is going down behind them. (...) The frigate birds (...) sometimes step on the water. They fly and put their feet in the water. They indicate to people where fish are, and people paddle after them.

As we were discussing this drawing, I noticed something in the top right corner, and asked about it. [NEXT]

Michael answers that...
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /></figure>

From: https://youtu.be/WyB-72XyWNQ

Gulf of Chiriqui, Panama, 11 May 2012

Captain Shane Jarvis, of the TOP Cat,
Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge
Isla Paridas, Panama

Here is a video to show you what he is referring to.
As I was never able to film a good example of this
phenomenon myself I have resorted to getting a
video from Youtube.

This is a large fish feeding frenzy, in which predator
fish such as tuna enter a state of excitement as
they feed on an abundant school of bait fish, while
birds circle above and catch their own share of bait
fish that are thus driven to the surface by the
predators. Unseen here are also many sharks.
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /></figure>

This is an example of the small fish that are involved as bait.
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /></figure>

And here are some illustrations of how abundant the catch can be when tuna enter such a feeding frenzy, if fishers can indeed paddle - or motor - after them.
Copyright Mark Cellars 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /></figure>

This was all caught in barely a few minutes.
<figure><img src="image_28.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_29.png" /></figure>

By looking a little closely at this photograph, I want to give you another
example of a bird which is associated with men's fishing. What is my good friend
and brother Laimen looking at? At a bird, naturally.
White-bellied sea-eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster),

Extracted from J.N. Davies in HANZAB 2 - © BirdLife Australia

Compiled by J.W. Hardy for the Australian Bird Study Association Inc.

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /><figcaption>Adult</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>Second Immature</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /><figcaption>First Immature</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>Manilava
in Tungag</figcaption></figure>

An immature White-bellied sea-eagle. Manilava: literally, the “big bird”.
<figure><img src="image_34.png" /></figure>

White-bellied Sea Eagle,
Sundarban West Bengal,
August 2019.

CC BY 4.0,

By Dibyendu Ash

People of Lavongai say of this bird that it is a an excellent fisher, and indeed, it catches fish that are, large for its size, and is consequently associated with men.

So here, we have an association between certain species of birds – frigate birds that indicate where large fish are aggregating, eagles that catch relatively large fish – and a gender category: men. This follows a line of reasoning that associates these two series because of fishing techniques. The fish are the glue, in a sense, that make these birds, and this masculine social category, stick together.
# Women fishing

What now, of women's fishing techniques?
<figure><img src="image_35.png" /></figure>

Michael: this drawing shows how women fish, how they fish on the shore. This is another way to fish, one fishes on the reef, in a shallow place. The women go there, stand up and throw the line. (...) (In this drawing) it is the shore (...) This drawing shows the way in which the women fish. The **men** go fishing in **canoes**, and so the **women stand on the reef**, and throw their lines.

Again, we may begin with a drawing by Michael Toreu Ottis, of a woman fishing on the reef flat.
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_36.png" /></figure>

Standing on the reef at low tide to find marine animals is indeed something which only women, and some children pratice.
Copyright Mark Collins, 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

<figure><img src="image_37.png" /></figure>

Just as the technique which Michael drew, of fishing with a hand-held line while standing on the reef, is practices only by women, or your girls as illustrated here.
<figure><img src="image_38.png" /></figure>

**Michael:** that is a heron. The heron knows how to fish too. It goes fishing at low tide, you can see them around the reef, they spear fish. When the tide is high, they fish around the shore, they search for small fish, for squids, and things like that, they spear them.

(...)

**Mark Collins:** tell me more about the heron.

**Ben Ottis:** when it is low tide, the heron goes on the reef.

**Melis:** in the sea-grass (*kasung*).

**Ben Ottis:** it kills small moray eels (*sakuma*).

Once again, I notice a bird, and ask him about it.
<figure><img src="image_39.png" /></figure>

Photo by [patrickkavanagh](https://www PATRICKKAVANAGH.COM), CC BY 2.0

This is a pacific reef heron, and although they are abundant on Lavongai I was never able to take such a good photograph which I have once again borrowed one. So here again we have an semi-explicit association between a bird – the heron – and a gender category: women. This is due to the fishing methods they resort to: both women and herons fish standing up on the reef flat.
Back to the “gender of the fish”:
Problems (or questions) with marine life and
problems (or questions) with society in Island Melanesia

So, we have...
<figure><img src="image_40.png" /></figure>

Fisher people, men and women, and fish, that are either male or female, with an associated gendered discourse regarding how these animals are supposed to be and are supposed to behave. Do these correspond? No, they do not.
<figure><img src="image_41.png" /></figure>

What of the birds? We have fisher people and fisher birds, both gendered also.
But is it through this correspondence that the association is made? Again, no.
<figure><img src="image_42.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_43.png" /></figure>

To summarise the situation, we have two cross-cutting principles of social organisation in human and non-human landscape.
Putting it together...

* Gender is “messy”: there are borderline cases, changes, transitions, etc. (Strathern 1978, 1988; Butler 1990), and women have key roles in “men’s things” (Bonnemère 2018)

* Ontology too, is “messy”: there are no pure “totemists”, no pure “naturalists” (Descola 2013: 232-234) but these are overarching tendencies.
Ontological and gendered logics share two fundamental and opposed operations:

**distinguishing**

(dichotomising, opposing)

vs

**associating**

(bringing together, grouping)

What does bring ontological and gender considerations together is that both involve processes of distinguishing and associating. These are the two fundamental operators that are used in creating gender divisions, and then associating one gender with one thing and the other with its opposite. They are also the same operators that are the fundamental building blocks of ontologies, what Descola terms continuity is an associative operation, and what he terms discontinuity is a distinguishing operation.
Copyright Mark Coopers 2025 - Made Available under the CC BY-SA License

Thank you!

References

Bonnemère, Pascale. 2018. *Acting for Others: Relational Transformations in Papua New Guinea*. Translated by Nora Scott. Chicago: Hau Books.

Descola, Philippe. 2013. *Beyond Nature and Culture*. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.

Douglas, Mary. 2003. 'The Gender of the Trout'. *Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics* 44 (September): 171–80.

Strathern, Marilyn. 1978. 'The Achievement of Sex: Paradoxes in Hagen Gender-Thinking'. In *The Yearbook of Symbolic Anthropology*: I, edited by Erik Schwimmer, 171–202. London / Montreal: C. Hurst & Co. / Queen's University Press.

Strathern, Marilyn. 2001. *The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia*. Studies in Melanesian Anthropology 6. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thank you very much for your attention