The aim of the study was to gather relevant information on specific cultural issues that enhanced coastal resource management programmes. The initiative was valuable because even though customary practices were the basis of the community-based marine resource management activities spreading in Fiji and other parts of Oceania over the last decade, little research had been undertaken on the influence of the cultural roles. Moreover, the challenges that were facing community-based marine resources management today (e.g. poaching) made it critical that the influence of cultural roles be better understood and addressed. For this reason, cultural roles had joined the ecologic, economic, social and economic factors as important parameters that needed to be better understood for the effective management of the marine resources at the community level.