The usefulness of conventional fisheries science for long-term fisheries management and policies in the resource-poor islands of the pacific is very limited. Fishery managers can, however, make use of such alternative sources of information as archaeological and historical data to develop fishery management initiatives. Most Pacific Islands were settled by humans Over the last three millennia, although human settlement in Western Melanesia dates from the Late Pleistocene, a period of about 40 millennia. Archaeological studies over the past half century contain information on the long-term subsistence exploitation of fish and invertebrates from near shore coral reefs and lagoons. Molluscs appear to have been a very important food source for early human colonists in the Pacific Islands, but declines in abundance through harvest pressure and environmental changes forced a greater reliance on fin-fish capture and on agriculture. There is no firm evidence from the archaeological record to suggest that long-term Subsistence exploitation of reef fish populations has had any serious negative effects on abundance or structure of reef fish communities. Sources for more recent historical information are also exemplified and briefly examined for their usefulness in assessing the impacts of commercial fishing. It is argued that fishery managers who adopt a data-less approach to fishery management could profitably use these sources of information to enrich their assessment of the impacts of various management scenarios.