The Sea and its People: A Journey Through Polynesia

February 28 – Jeudi – Tupuai

2009-03-26T18:06:00.018-04:00

“So you are interested in fishing techniques? What books have you read? Did you read Sinoto? No? Do you speak French? No? Then what are you doing here?” This is the volley of questions that the Crazy Guy fires at me as I first chat with him over the gas pump at his service station in the village. In the face of this fusillade I first feel a bit like the coconut palms in Manihi during the squalls; swept back and agitated. Then I get a bit indignant and in the firmest possible way advise him that I am a Scientist, so back off, and if fluency of language was the condition of learning about other cultures, we would learn precious little about each other on this earth. He seems a bit mollified and agrees to see me at his house a little later in the morning. This does not seem so good.

So at the appointed hour I pedal the 20 minutes to his house, a low-slung affair with a nice front yard hidden from the road by a tall hedge. There is the front porch which opens onto the office of the Crazy Guy, and one crazy office it is. The walls are filled with bookshelves stuffed full of old books with gorgeous gilt bindings, the floor is covered with dusty cardboard boxes and the desks bear a respectable load of esoteric clutter and many computer monitors. The ice of our previous meeting is quickly broken, and I get the sense I have just met someone very, very interesting. And indeed Larry Miller (for that is his name) turns out to be this and much, much more. Ok, for just a taste go ahead and google Miller + Tubuai and spend even 10 minutes looking at his site - you’ll get an idea of what kind of expansive, creative, inquisitive and obsessive mind we are talking about here. He is, in his own words, an ex-hippie from Vancouver, Canada, who stumbled on these islands about thirty years ago on a quest to realize the lifestyle of his dreams.

He is an ex-hippie all right. And by this I mean that he possesses an organized and almost obsessive approach to his undertakings that doesn’t quite square with our notions of hippiehood. An example: He first tried the Marquesas Islands where he lived in Nuku Hiva for about six months. He found the place (where he built a large tree house for himself, by the way…) too hot and buggy, so he conducted a very thorough climatological study of the Polynesian Archipelago complete with amounts of insolation, rainfall, average day/night temperatures etc. All this is meticulously and artistically recorded in one of his notebooks that are beautifully illustrated and generally fit for publication as a series of books. But I digress… He eventually settled in Tupuai and has lived here with his enchanting family since the early 80’s.

After settling and buying some land, he became obsessed with the past of the island. It is easy, to become obsessed with the past here. The past is everywhere. You stub your toe in it walking in the fields and the woods, your eye catches it in the construction of the canoes and you hear it in the names of the children, named after ancestors. So Larry, in his unique way, starts to study up on the past and collects a library that contains pretty much everything worth reading on the Austral Islands. Simultaneously he sets about to collect all the loose stone adzes, fishing net weights, mortars and anything else that spontaneously pop up from the earth when the fields are plowed for spring planting. The results are impressive, and I again urge you to take a look at his website. Though not formally trained in archaeology, he has nonetheless participated in a number of professional digs on the island, and has presented some of his own findings in international professional meetings.

Needless to say, I learn a lot from him. Examples: in a good account from the 1840’s, the island’s population was reduced by disease to a mere 140 inhabitants. That the majority of the stone tools so readily found around here are really not that old; the people of Tupuai actually preferred their stone adzes to the European iron axes when first comparisons were made and produced them until well into the 19th century. That the island speaks Tahitian because the original language of Tupuai did not survive through the epidemics and the early missionaries. I could go on, but you get the idea.

After some hours of conversation he jumps up and pulls me along for a tour of the best Marae (ancient temple) of the island. After inspecting it and receiving his guided tour, he drags me to a neighboring potato field that has just been plowed for planting. He tells me he has found all sorts of artifacts on this particular field and others just like it. We walk up and down the furrows under the blazing early afternoon sun, the red volcanic soil turning to dust under my shoes and sweat dripping and stinging my eyes. And then I spot this grey shape in the midst of the red earth and pick up a half of a broken adze. I pick it up stunned by the discovery, and excitedly examine the area around me. When I locate the absent rear portion even Larry is a bit surprised; in his experience you don’t generally find the missing half. We keep walking the field for a bit longer before yielding to the heat of the sun and pile back in his pickup truck.

Next stop is Larry’s plantation, his 10-acre plot on the mountainside partially prepared for building the villa of his dreams and partially planted with fruit of every imaginable kind, from grapefruit to grapes. At this point we are getting along famously, and I get an invitation to join the family for a dinner out to celebrate the birthday of his daughter. I gladly accept and spend a very pleasant evening with this lovely family at the only restaurant on the island.

I return a couple of days later to view his collection of artifacts, which is quite extensive. He is preparing to transport it all to a small office at the municipal building, eventually to be organized as a local museum. The collection, now piled in five large plastic tubs, is extensive enough to have attracted a visit by Yoshi Sinoto, the noted Polynesia expert and archeologist from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. In classic archeological thought, the value of an artifact mostly stems from the context in which it was found; other artifacts, dwellings, food remnants, burial arrangements etc. It is Larry’s thesis that when you find tools by the bucket load, even with no context other than a modern potato field, you can still study the artifacts themselves in an organized way and derive useful information from it all. He calls this the field of implementology, and has since moved on to apply this to bookbinding tools in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. Hence the books in his lair. Really – google Miller + Tubuai.

Larry may be the island’s pre-eminent authority on the pre-contact Tupuai, but hardly the only person interested in the past. My stay coincides with a youth event at the local protestant church and I have the opportunity to attend two evenings’ worth of dancing, singing, playing and instruction in some traditional fishing techniques. Yes, the good people of Tupuai are educating their young in things traditional, and the said youth seem genuinely interested. Yes, there is still a back row of the sullen types melding minds with their Gameboys, but overall the vibe is entirely positive and not forced. I mean we are talking about 5 year olds learning how to tie together a basic hook and line setup and how to use it, with the adults telling me they do this because Tupuai lives from the sea and it is necessary for the next generation to know these skills. I am impressed by the spirit of togetherness and all the music and dance that comes from everyone of the 200 or so assembled parishioners.

Oh, and why Crazy Guy? He calls everybody that; everyone is a crazy guy to Larry, even when he addresses them in French. Ça va, crazy guy! And who am I to argue with him? This small island has four churches of all the denominations around. This translates to 20 places of worship, divided amongst the faithful Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Sanitos (a reform Mormon sect) and 7th day Adventists. I’m talking to an ex-hippie who collects and studies rare old European books and dreams of tree houses. Meanwhile the said hippie is talking to me, an expat Finn in a French and Tahitian-speaking land who is doing the rounds talking to people about fishing. The situation seems surreal enough to warrant his point of view. You go, Crazy Guy!

February 25 – Mercredi – Tupuai

2009-03-24T17:53:00.011-04:00

If you go to Google Earth and look for Tubuai, you’ll find an image of an island in a state of slow transformation. Like Bora Bora, Tupuai features a worn-down nubbin of an ancient volcano at its center, surrounded by a continuous reef encircling a shallow lagoon. In a mere couple of million years, the remnant mountain will complete its disappearing act through erosion and subsidence of the island leaving behind the ever growing living coral ring of a mature atoll island. Tupuai (the original Polynesian name transformed to Tubuai in European mouths, like PoraPora to Bora Bora) is part of the Australs Island group, and is both the largest and most populated. No metropolis by any means with just about 3,000 souls, the island sits almost directly on the Tropic of Capricorn and some 350 nautical miles south of Papeete.

This much I knew, having done some basic homework on my next stop. One of the best parts of my travels thus far has been the meeting of new people in the circumstances of “Hi. A friend of yours said I could come and stay in your house for the next 10 days. Is it ok? He did call you, right?” This time the first meeting plays out at the Papeete airport, as my Tupuai host(ess) is slated to take the same flight there with me. I have her cell phone number and dial it in the Air Tahiti waiting area, scanning the rows of waiting people for a woman answering a cell phone. It works! I spot her, wave, we smile, and I introduce myself to Chantal Tahiata and her adorable three-year-old daughter Tapaeru. Chantal is a kind, elegant woman in her forties, a member of the Polynesian Assembly (think of her as a congresswoman) and the chair of Union Pour La Democracie (UPLD), an alliance of parties currently forming the senior partner of the sitting government. In short, she is someone in the political scene of French Polynesia!

[Tapaeru says hi!]

Chantal is returning to Tupuai after a prolonged, three-week absence. The government here has been in a state of acute crisis for more than three months, a crisis that has just seen a dramatic resolution through the election of a new president by the assembly (the head of government is elected by the assembly, not by direct popular vote; come to think of it, to make any sense of this week I’ll have to make my next post all about politics). Everyone in Tupuai is intensely curious to talk to her about it in a scene that might feature an Electoral College battle for the US presidency, and the coming home of one of the electors to explain what on earth happened. Accordingly, waiting at home is not just husband Thierry but a stream of family and friends and the gathering around the dinner table is large. The political talk is conducted in Tahitian and French, so on this first pass I catch very little. Chantal and Thierry’s home is a family homestead in the village, a large house built by Chantal’s father who was also a prominent politician. The walls and shelves are full of paraphernalia of a life spent in the public arena, complete with pictures from photo-ops during visits by foreign dignitaries. By any standards these digs are comfortable, after Manihi they seem downright luxurious; a large room with high ceilings and windows open onto a beautiful garden, a king-size bed with pillows and very comfy sheets.

The next day we go for a little tour of the island with Thierry and Chantal. I say a little tour advisedly, as you don’t conduct a big tour on an island this small. Only about 10 miles wide, the roughly oval island is ringed with a reef some 3 miles distant from the shore. There is a road that runs along the shore around the island, and another one that crosses over a low spot close to the middle of it, but that is it. All human activity is centered around these two roads, leaving the mountainous middle pretty much empty. We drive on the ring road and cut through the middle, occasionally stopping to chat with people or take in some sight as suggested by Chantal and Thierry. Because the island lies right on the tropic line, the climate here is more temperate than Tahiti. Vegetation looks different, and there is a fair amount of agriculture going on here. Veggies like taro, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage and lettuce are grown here for export to Tahiti though from Chantal I learn this to be in decline due to competition from New Zealand and Australia.

The shore, a pretty continuous stretch of narrow beach, is dotted here and there with fishing canoes and groups of small aluminium skiffs. I’ve been told of three particular fishing specialties on this island and am looking forward to getting on the water to see these in action. There is a hitch, though. Thierry is a broken man. He is a passionate fisherman himself, someone whose weekly life and state of happiness have revolved around going out on his boat every weekend in search of big fish. Alas, his boat sunk about two weeks ago. Or I should say it was sunk two weeks ago, sunk by a big, bad marlin ramming the boat. Yes, I’m not kidding about this, though the details are a little sketchy. It seems Thierry had lent his boat, a 20’ potimarara with a 110 hp outboard, to some French friend who had been taking it out occasionally during the week when Thierry was working at his day job with the electric company.

It is this friend who was responsible for the calamity and whose testimony is the only record of what actually transpired with the fish. Either the fish actually rammed the boat, or the boat was swamped trying to get it on board, the crew of two eventually swam some undisclosed number of miles to shore. Initially I am completely skeptical about any of these stories, and then Thierry shows some photos of marlins he has caught on his boat and then I believe. These are some seriously big fish, the largest weighing in at over 400kg. Yes, over 800lbs. The fish are huge, and Thierry, as I mentioned, is deeply distressed. Mostly over not being able to fish, but also deeply disappointed at the loss of the boat, the motor and some serious amount of big fishing gear. Oh yes, and the disappearance of the “friend” who has since departed for France.

And then again, from my selfish perspective, this may be a blessing. You see Thierry had planned to take a few days off to go fishing with me. As wonderfully generous as this would have been, it would also have placed me squarely in the world of modern chase for the trophy game fish – something not really in my program. So now I am free to go with the little guys on the little boats to fish on the lagoon. Indeed this begins on Monday with a demonstration of one of the Tupuai fishing specialties I mentioned earlier, the collection of Pahua, or the giant clam.

Giant clams (or genus Tridachna) aren’t all giant. Some species are quite modest in size, about the size of a very large quahog, while others do indeed grow to be some half a meter in width. Like corals, they harbor endosymbiotic algae in their tissues, in the portion of the mantle visible to the outside and hence bathed by sunlight. The algae photosynthesize and provide nutrition to the clams, and the clam protects the algae, among other ways by producing these drop-dead gorgeous pigments as sunscreens against harmful ultraviolet rays. The clams are pretty common all around Polynesia, but very, very common in Tupuai. I have never, ever seen so many of these things in my life! And there is another difference; in the Tuamotus, the clams are mostly deeply embedded inside coral boulders, whereas here they just jut out from the coral rock they are anchored to.

All this I learn first hand on Monday morning as Chantal’s brother Karl, cousin Kekere and his wife take me with them to go gather some Pahua. They pick me up at Chantal’s on Karl’s pickup truck with his 16’ Carolina Skiff on a trailer in tow. We travel a few miles down the road, launch the boat off a beach, and head out to the lagoon, the flat-bottomed skiff slurping an occasional bigger wave over the low, square bow. At this point I have come to accept that a significant amount of bailing is just part of the boating routine here, though I am left wondering exactly why someone thought it a good idea to import a boat meant for the still waters of some South Carolina swamp to an oceanic island where brisk trade winds and subsequent waves are the norm. No matter, wielding a bucket we reach the destination, anchor and get in the water. And I get my revelation of what a lot of Tridachna actually means (for those familiar with field ecology, I conduct a brief survey and arrive at an estimate of three to four Pahua per square meter).

The technique for collecting them is not exactly rocket science. Armed with a 1.5 cm steel spike some 30 cm long, you spot a Pahua, aim at the end with the excurrent siphon and jam the spike between the shells. At this point the clam realizes the size of the calamity about to occur and tries to slam shut. Alas, this maneuver just affixes the spike nice and tight, and by firmly turning it back and forth a couple of times the Pahua breaks free of the reef. The operation takes about five seconds, so it is possible for a couple of people to collect the 300 or so clams that I roughly count entering the boat in the 4 hours we are out there. These four hours also include the occasional breaks for opening and shucking the clams, and it is at this point I start understanding the scale of this fishery in Tupuai. You see, the shells of these things are really thick and heavy, nothing a person in their right mind would choose to cart home with them. So you shuck them in the anchored boat and chuck the shell back in the water. As I snorkel around the boat, I spot tens of these resulting shell piles littering the bottom.

Such is the scale of these piles that I immediately wonder whether this can be a stable situation, because I also notice that around the piles there aren’t many Pahua at all. I inquire about this with Kekere and Karl, and they confirm that the concern is warranted. There is less Pahua today than before, and more of them are being shipped out to Tahiti. Indeed I hear that the fisheries service has actually conducted a survey and has told the fishermen that the party will be over within a decade with current rates of collection. Not knowing any details I don’t know how much confidence to place in this, but certainly the collecting is easy enough to do.

Occasionally Kekere goes after some fish with a spear gun, but after visiting the Tuamotus, the density and size of fish around seems lower and his catch reflects this. The shucking of the clams is a sight, these folks are very practiced at it. Just for fun I time Kekere at 9 seconds per clam, as he deftly maneuvers a knife that looks too big for the job around the scalloped edge of the shells. A second operation (which I don’t time) removes the foot with remnants of the attachment point together with two black round structures that look like digestive glands. Every so often Kekere pauses to toss some bits of the Pahua in his mouth, and he offers me the adductor muscle in some lime juice for a taster. It is very good, the taste is close to a fresh scallop but the texture is much firmer. I eat some more, and then go for a longer snorkeling expedition toward the reef crest as the trio continues their labor. I’m told they are collecting the Pahua for Chantal to take with her for relatives and supporters on the other Austral Islands where she will be shortly visiting on her election information tour.

And so I find myself re-visiting this conundrum of exactly how big a population the island is actually feeding from its marine resources. Right, there are some 3,000 people here, but everybody has multiple relatives on multiple islands so the explanation of “just collecting for the family” doesn’t sound quite so benign any more. Tupuai is famed for the Pahua, other islands simply don’t support the same densities of them, and they are deeply in the food culture of this island. Eaten raw and in stews, the edible portion of each clam adds up to about 100 grams, so a couple of them can make the nucleus of a meal.

Eventually around two o’clock we head back, chased by a stiff squall as we slop our way (bailing…) through the gorgeous turquoise waters of the lagoon. Later in the day I help Thierry bag the catch in Ziploc bags, and get a rough measure of about 35 kg of clams having been collected in that one outing. It is unclear to me how long Pahua have been collected here. Shells are commonly found in the archeological record of early settlements but not in a way that offers any proof of consumption as food. It is likely that they were collected, as they grow in very shallow water and the collection is so easy as long as you can see them. On the other hand it occurs to me that to achieve what we did today without goggles of some sort would be impossible – I test this theory by trying to locate some Pahua with my mask off and find it indeed completely impossible.

Since arriving, I have been asking such questions about past practises, but the answers have been few. Instead I’ve been told repeatedly that I must go see The Crazy Guy, he knows all about the history of the island. This sounds like intriguing advice, apparently the crazy guy is someone from Canada who has lived here for a long time and is a genuine character. He lives not far from Chantal, and I resolve to pay him a visit the very next day.

February 23 – Lundi – Tupuai

2009-03-18T18:29:00.007-04:00

This time I think I’m going to lose it. I mean I just can’t see not losing it. Even before placing the tasty morsel in my mouth, the mere sight of it in the bowl proffered to me is enough to start a little retch in my stomach. Alas, this is my first day with my new hosts in Tupuai, and the impulse to do right by them is mighty so in it goes and it…is…ghastly! We are talking about a strip of raw sea cucumber served in a mixture of lime juice and, yes, fafaru. (For an explanation of fafaru, please the post from Feb. 1) The texture is that of rubber bands, eraser bits and snail slime inside of a small hot water bottle you are trying to chew through. It is chewy. It is gooey. It is occasionally crunchy and always tough. The lime makes my mouth pucker and the fafaru fills my whole head with the essence of rotten fish. So I try to concentrate my thoughts on things like the taxman and Sarah Palin’s 2012 presidential campaign and the task at hand: Do not throw up all over the inside of this rather nice big late model Ford pickup truck. Eventually my hosts’ attention is drawn to their interlocutor on the other side of the car, and I can fling (with extreme prejudice) the still-intact sea cucumber bit out the window, smile and smack my lips in appreciation as the attention eventually returns to me. Whew.

With this introduction it is my intention to dwell for a bit on my culinary adventures thus far, and the diet around here in general. No pictures with this one, I’m afraid, as in a role of a guest I find taking pictures of the things on my plate just a bit too weird. Here’s a partial list of what I’ve eaten so far, though. Fish; boiled, fried, dried, salted, rotted and raw. Lobster; baked, roasted, rotted (in fafaru). Coconut Crab. Snails. Limpets. Turtle. Yes, turtle - unlucky for the turtle, it does make one good stew and is traditionally (though currently illegally) eaten all over Polynesia. I have reached a point where, when offered the gizzard of a goatfish or the gonads of an urchin, I can just pop the thing in my mouth and dwell on the texture and taste without many of my prejudices of old.

Some prejudices are harder to overcome than others, though. In Rangiroa I started partaking in the lovely Tahitian habit of saying grace before meals. I even developed my very own silent prayer I uttered before sampling a dish of unknown identity: Please, dear God, don’t let it be Dog. Yes, they eat dog around here, and yes, I hear it reported that it too tastes good in a stew. And tell you what, there are plenty enough dogs around! Further, after a few restless nights punctuated with the inevitable dogfights around town and the loud and persistent protest of every canine around to the passage of some nocturnal interloper, I find even this prejudice start to recede. Oh, and I also know why you kill chickens by wringing their necks. Because you bloody want to, is why! Yes, the cocks call their cock-a-doodle-doos at dawn – and every other fracking hour one is trying to catch some sleep. Yes, wringing their necks is the only way of extracting some justice in a land where you sleep with the windows always open.

The veggies are fewer in number than the animal options; uru (breadfruit) and taro are just about all that are regularly eaten, with lots of French fries in the menu in the local fast food joints. Green things seem out of fashion pretty universally. Oh, and bread. Lots and lots of bread, really cheap (but good) baguettes, subsidized by the French taxpayers and available in every village fresh every morning for the ridiculous price of about 70 cents. Also rice, a lot of rice. As a matter of fact you could say that the modern Tahitian food is dominated by starch and fat. After a month of eating at family tables I do understand clearly now why there are so many big – and I mean scary big – people around.

So many big people and so much diabetes and heart disease, in fact, that it has attracted international attention. I have the good fortune to have my stay in Tupuai coincide with the public delivery of the preliminary report of a comprehensive multi-island study of the diet/disease interaction in Polynesia, conducted by a team from Lavalle University from Quebec. Since the public presentation is conducted in French I miss a fair amount of the message and so can’t quote many details but: The picture is not good, obesity is rampant across almost all age groups and exercise is rare. Interestingly, many people I talk to afterwards blame their genes rather than diet, whereas the study finds the diet to explain 100% of the observed disease patterns. Denial is a universal defense mechanism, I find.

Ok, so I won’t dwell too much on the sights I’ve seen, but a couple of snapshots. Children and some adults assembling a Dagwood-style pile from wheat crackers and Nutella. And then they dunk this in a bowl of Milo, milk and sugar, eventually allowing the tails of the sugar sandwich to meld with the liquid sugar in the bowl to form this pap that is then spooned up with good appetite. Now I’m not saying this is any worse that some General Mills or Nabisco products on the shelves in the US, but it is a pretty peculiar thing to see.

Another accepted food group are the various forms of canned oinks and moos commonly served in stews and as side dishes. I’m talking of course of Spam and all the other related potted meat products that just haven’t formed any part of my diet at any time in my life (Thank you, Mother!), and consequently find it amazing people eat the stuff when they do have many other good, affordable options around. Yes, I’ve tried them all when offered, and I reluctantly concede that they are actually a little better than fafaru.

While I’m at this, I might as well mention the liquid food group. Polynesians drink significant quantities of beer. Right, I’m sure you spotted the generalization in the statement above, for not everyone drinks that much (particularly the women) but boy do some guys make up for it and keep the average up! When you hear someone declare they only had two beers over the weekend, this actually refers to the number of cases they consumed – I’m not making this up! In my experience the guys on these islands make happy drunks very happy to share their beer with you. The scary part for the casual observer is the grim determination with which they keep downing the brews – there is no let-up, it is all go, go, go until either the beer or the drinker go out. The next day begins with a beer, and this bender can last well into Monday, which is casually known here as the “petit Dimanche” (the small Sunday).

A friend of Hérvé’s who showed up at the house around nine o’clock on Friday, the day before our departure, offers a good illustration of this behavior. He is in his late forties, a heavy-set guy who spills out from the front seat of his large pick-up that slowly creeps up the driveway. Hérvé knows what is coming, and carries three chairs out to the porch as soon as he recognizes the arriving truck. The friend spills out of the truck, staggers to the porch and wordlessly collapses on the empty chair - all the while holding a can of Hinano. He looks kind of morose, actually downright frightening in this inebriated state, but his face dissolves into this absolutely radiant and sweet smile when Hérvé introduces me to him. It turns out that the missus threw him out of the house, and he is here for a refuge – a situation I gather is not unusual. Long story short, another hour and a half and pass at a clip of about a beer every 15 minutes. At this point he runs out, staggers back to the truck and returns with a small box of Zumuva wine, a product exactly as bad as the name suggests.

At around eleven the talk turns to music, and Hérvé announces that a) the friend is a really good ukulele player and b) with his guitar and singing, they make one sweet Paumotu duo. Trouble is, the uke is back at the house and, despite my vocal pleas to the contrary, Hérvé and the friend pile into the truck and, with a few course corrections involving gear changes, back out of the long, dark drive. I resolve not to risk my own neck in this endeavor, because the friend is truly blotto. When he first proposes fetching the uke, I think he is just joking. Now, I don’t think him capable of finding his own butt with two hands at this stage of the night, and don’t really expect to see the two of them back anytime soon. Imagine my surprise then, when the headlights re-appear some twenty minutes later, miss all the palm trees and come to a halt in front of the house.

So now picture this. The friend sits slumped in a plastic lawn chair, occasionally threatening to roll right out of it. He is, as I mentioned, a stocky guy, with big hands and thick fingers worn leathery and calloused by cutting copra. His eyes are but thin slits, for all purposes closed, and he fumbles and almost drops the uke as he reaches for it. Yet somehow, once secure in place, his fingers know where to go, his face takes on a Buddha-like serenity and indeed the two of them play absolutely beautiful tunes together. I am astounded by this display of grace and mentally re-calibrate the performance scale for practiced drunks. I record them for a while, but eventually have to head to bed and leave the two friends playing together on the porch. Next morning they are both up early, but while Hérvé goes for a bottle of aspirin, his friend shuffles over to the truck and opens another box of Zumuva for breakfast.

Alas, this behavior does not always lead to mellow tunes; domestic violence and casual bar fights are apparently all too common, not to mention the economic hardships families suffer in this place of exorbitantly expensive beer. Alcohol abuse in Polynesia is a phenomenon that has been around since European contact, and fast solutions to the problem seem unlikely. I hasten to remind that the behavior is not universal, just distressingly common.

This post started in Tupuai, but I’m afraid I’ve gotten way off the track. I’ll get back on track with the next post, on some very interesting experiences both on and off the water on this beautiful island.

February 20 – Vendredi – Papeete

2009-03-16T04:31:00.011-04:00

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in small boats, I have accumulated a fair amount of good advice on the topic of boats and outboards. Most of this advice was passed on to me during the early years by people with much experience, advice that seemed worth hanging on to and putting to practice. It has been an often painful experience (at times quite literally so) riding in said small boats in Polynesia and witness the near-total absence of such boating sages, judging from the operating protocols followed here. I muse on these things as Teri is whipping the 16-foot Boston Whaler copy toward the Manihi pass over the choppy seas in the lagoon. The 50 hp outboard is wailing at full throttle. My seat on the boat, long since torn off its fastenings by this abuse, is bouncing in the air together with my behind, and I have a hard time figuring out whether the boat might mercifully delaminate and sink before my liver and kidneys have completed trading places.

It seems ever thus. You shove off the dock and the throttle opens to full. This is despite the fact that a) the boats are worn to bits way before their time, b) said boats are the basis for the livelihood for the operators, and c) gas costs $6.24 per gallon. Throttling back some 20% would save your boat, a bundle of fuel, and get you there just a teensy bit later. I don’t think this lecture will work with Teri, however, and, given that attempting to speak would just lead to tongue injury under the present conditions anyway, I just shut up and hang on.

What comes to the rescue is the fact that even tuna can’t keep up with this pace, and soon after we go through the pass to the open sea Teri slows down to start fishing. It is five o’clock in the afternoon, and I’ve come to learn about fishing outside the reef in Manihi. I’ve put together most of the story studying Teri’s gear as he loads it in the boat; a couple of large plastic spools holding thick monofilament, two small buoys and a bucket of assorted lures. The lures are a combination of a steel plug with a rubber squid-looking skirt trailing a pair of large hooks and thoroughly modern plastic affairs that look like a small fish. In a fit of irony I spot one of these made by a Finnish company called Rapala and relate this to Teri, who is convinced that Rapala is some big Pacific game fish instead of the last name of some guy in the far reaches of the Great Frozen North.

Trolling is trolling, though, and anyone who fishes recreationally in the coastal US waters for tuna knows how to do this. Bring the boat up to about 8 knots of speed, put out the lure and some 100’ of line and hope for the best. One big difference, though. This boat does not bristle with thousands of dollars worth of rods, reels, outriggers or beer can holders. Instead, Teri slips a loop of the monofilament around a finger with the reel at his feet and one of the buoys at the ready just in case he should catch something so big he just can’t hold on. In that case you quickly tie the monofilament to the buoy, heave it all overboard and let the fish fight the buoy until it is tired and ready to be reeled in. Oh, and there is no “fighting chair”.

So we troll. Teri looks around for birds, finds a couple of feeding flocks and heads toward them. Alas, it is a quiet day, and there is nothing to do but to enjoy the colors of the approaching sunset as we splash around in the 2-meter swell. A couple of lure changes doesn’t improve our luck and, when the light has failed, Teri packs it in and I brace for the return trip to camp.

How old is the practice of trolling in Polynesia I have to wonder. The big thing is the speed, you see – troll too slow and the fast moving tuna won’t confuse your lure for something tasty. And as much as I admire the paddling prowess of the modern Tahitian guys, I have a hard time seeing them keeping up 6+ knots for long periods of time. Maybe. I will endeavor to find out, particularly as some ancient hooks I’ve seen at Harvard’s Peabody Museum look an awfully lot like something you might use for trolling.

With this outing my stay in Manihi comes to a close. Before the fishing expedition I take one last walk to town, hail a passing boat and cross to the other side of the pass. I follow the road toward the airport, taking leisurely side tours alternately to the ocean and lagoon sides of the narrow motu. The landscape is dominated by a huge coconut walk that stretches on for some three miles on the lagoon side of the road. I wander on the grounds of a couple of large closed and abandoned pearl farms on the lagoon side, realizing that the mountain of plastic crap left behind in and out of the water must be huge indeed!

My walk terminates at the luxury resort right next to the airport, and I indulge in a couple of hours of swimming, lounging, and a nice, crisp poolside G&T. This is the other side of the fence, so to speak, and looks every bit the tropical paradise seen in Polynesia travel brochures. I am left scratching my head, though, wondering exactly what do the visitors do in Manihi (at about $ 400 per night) after the eat/sleep/swim/sunbathe options have been exhausted?

This morning I strike camp, say goodbyes and am chased to the airport by another pretty vicious squall that luckily allows me to reach the airport before unleashing the torrent. Now it is Papeete for a night in a hotel, and off to Tubuai the next afternoon. I must admit I am looking forward to a real bed with real sheets, and plan to eat a whole mountain of fruit for breakfast! I’m also looking forward to a different social interaction, the difference between visiting with Maohi and Popaa now being clearly defined in my mind. I am very grateful to my host, and am enchanted by his island. He is realizing his vision of the deserted island getaway, but I am here looking for the people!

February 19 – Jeudi – Manihi

2009-03-13T18:10:00.013-04:00

Ok, so the big, bad squall didn’t occur on the night of the 16th as I feared. No, those squalls were nice, almost a domestic variety that just make you grateful that the cistern is filling up from the rain. For someone who travels in a sailing ship in these waters, last night served as a good reminder of the fact that every squall is different, and that some of them produce, besides lots and lots of fresh water, pretty fierce winds. The big one hit at around 0200 this morning with a wind burst I could hear approaching from a distance – you know, to build up the anticipation just a little bit.

After the first minute or so and the discovery that the rain fly didn’t depart after all, I tried to just lie back and, in some sort of way, enjoy the show. The trouble was that the thing just kept ramping up, each wind gust a little harder than the next. The palm trees were moving pretty violently making my shelter strung between two of them alternately sink and rise. The darkness completed the illusion of a staysails only kind of night out at sea. At around 0300 the wind gusts started easing and I realized my little camp might live to see daylight and indeed the sun once again won the battle and climbed up to dry this soggy paradise right on schedule.

Otherwise the weather has not managed to interfere with anything in the past few days. The visit to the pearl farm was very interesting indeed, more so than I had anticipated. After wading over (I do so enjoy pointing out this mode of travel…) to the next motu, I met with the proprietor Fernand and his family hard at work on their farm. So, what exactly is a pearl farm you may ask at this juncture, and the question is a fair one. In their case it consists of a processing facility of three small huts on a dock stretching into the lagoon, a series of underwater racks tied to the dock pilings, and a series of anchored buoys connected to each other by long (100m+) lines, this last installation some quarter mile away from the shore inside the lagoon. The act of farming the pearl oyster Pinctada margaritifera, in their case some 40,000 of them, consists of nursing the small freshly settled juvenile oysters to an adult size (some 15 cm across) in a series of steps moving them into progressively larger mesh pouches. In the last step the oyster is drilled and suspended on a line via a short monofilament pendant.

One last step. The nucleus of the pearl-to-be is inserted inside the mantle of the oyster via a small incision, together with a small piece of a mantle from another oyster. All this is meant to elicit a response from the oyster that is usually reserved as a defense against parasites penetrating the shell – the secretion of successive coats of new nacreous layer, this time manipulated to fall on the pearl nucleus. Nucleus. Sounds so small, doesn’t it? Just a little sand grain or some such, perhaps? The weird thing about the nucleus is this. It is about as big as the finished pearl (about 1mm, or a hair less than 1/32” smaller), and is a product of Mississippi. Yes, that Mississippi. Why does the Mississippi oyster shell make THE perfect nucleus for a Polynesian oyster is a perfect mystery to me. Perhaps it is the ultimate alien object in the universe of South Pacific lagoon bivalves and thus elicits a strong defensive response, a sort of aquatic version of the Ugly American abroad? Either way, a perfectly round, white, pearl-looking object is painstakingly surgically implanted in the tissue of the oyster, only to be recovered re-covered in a different color more than a year later.

Except that about 60% of the time it just doesn’t work. The penalty for the oysters failing to deliver? They are opened, eaten and their shells are cleaned and sold (for very little) to the local jewelry trade. The remaining 40% get another slightly larger nucleus and another year+ extension on their contract. Of course you don’t know who produced and who didn’t until you have painstakingly pried the oyster open and using a long scalpel and probe very carefully exposed the goods. Add to this all the occasional cleaning of the suspended oysters and the mesh pouches, and you start getting the picture that this is a pretty labor-intensive operation.

There is another layer of intrigue here. Circa 2003 the price of black pearls collapsed due to overproduction that had been building over the years. The government stepped in with an effort to stem the glut of pearls flooding the market. The method? A quality control step needed to obtain an export certificate, a now necessary piece of paper to sell your pearls abroad. The quality control step takes place in Papeete in a non-descript building in the industrial section of town.

There, the pearl is examined for roundness, color, and luster and given an x-ray. That’s right, every single pearl is x-rayed in an inspection step measuring the thickness of the nacreous layer on top of the nucleus. More than 400 µm is ok, less than that and the pearls are crushed. Crushed and sold as a powder to high-end cosmetics companies that try to convince women world-wide of the miraculous benefits of the South Seas Pearls to their complexion. The joke, of course, is that the powder is more than 99% re-packaged Mississippi river minerals.

So the farmer’s dilemma is when to ultimately harvest the pearl. Harvest it too early, and you lose the lot. Leaving it in for longer than necessary takes space on the farm you could use for the next generation of oysters. Selling to the local artisan market to make jewelry for domestic sales gets you a much lower price. Such are the headaches of the farmers still left in operation in Manihi. I have an opportunity to watch Fernand as he swiftly probes, judges, rejects or re-implants a stream of oysters prepared for the operation with the insertion of a wedge to force them open. Other family members are busy inserting the said wedges, shucking rejects and cleaning shell, or re-suspending the successful oysters for transport back to the lines in the lagoon. The culled oysters, by the way, are eaten.

This whole elaborate industry was borne of another, earlier one of simply harvesting the oysters from the seafloor. The target of this harvest was really the shell, as natural pearls (or keshi) are very rare. The shells went to making buttons, first in Europe then worldwide. By the 1960’s this industry was in big decline due to over-harvesting of the oysters (almost obliterated in many islands) and the emergence of the plastic alternative. In this void a Tahitian producer trained in Japan in pearl culture jumped in, and an industry was born.

For Fernand, the small farm still makes sense, given that the family also operates the village bakery and so doesn’t have to rely on the pearls alone. All told, this is aquaculture on a grand scale where the end product happens to be very valuable. Nothing is disturbed by this activity in the lagoon save some modest amount of underwater construction, so it seems like an environmentally sound operation as well. The downside is that the product is also a luxury good subject to the fickle tastes of the jewel-buying markets. I am also shown a white growth on many of the oyster shells, a disease that is killing upward of a half of all the oysters in the lagoon.

I wish all of Polynesia the best in this endeavor, as it is one of the very few hard exchange producing exports these islands have.

The coming of pearl farming did of course have a major impact on this island. It is difficult to imagine the transformation of Manihi from just another sleepy atoll to this pearl-making machine with tens of operating farms and millions of oysters. Many people around the Tuamotus and Tahiti came here for jobs, and those people needed housing and feeding. Plenty of abandoned homes dot the town as a testament to this earlier, busier phase of Manihi’s life. The build-up of the farming coincided with the decline in traditional fishing practices. Here, the village's permanent stone construction weir was destroyed by a cyclone in 1983 and never rebuilt. With ready employment in the pearl trade, the major fishing effort concentrated quickly, and today the sole operational weir provides the livelihood to only one family.

I talk to the operator of the weir, an elderly big gentleman with an air of reserve that makes my camera stay in its bag. According to his family memory, the stone construction weir was in operation for at least 100 years prior to its demise. Today he ships about 50 kg (or about 110 lbs) of fish from his weir daily by air to Papeete – or some 18 tons annually. This is an easy way of making a living for one family, and I can’t but help think that at some point other people will get in on the action. I have yet to hear about conflict regarding competing weirs, but conflict seems inevitable given the limited locations of good shallow areas around the pass where the fish travel the most. Seems like social de-evolution, doesn’t it? From cooperation to competition in one, short generation.

When I mention this scenario to Fernand and the weir owner, they both shrug their shoulders and rub their thumbs and forefingers together in that international sign for money. So, in the final analysis I don’t really know. Is pearl farming a low impact sustainable form of aquaculture? Or will the social de-stabilizing effects of this boom/bust-type of economic activity be felt by the whole island ecosystem as the employment rate plummets and people seek other sources of living?

February 16 – Lundi – Manihi

2009-03-09T20:07:00.012-04:00

I’m in my hammock. Awake and fighting the urge to jump up for the fourth time to go stroll on the beach and peer in the shallow water of the pass, where the black of the night has allowed the invertebrate fauna to make its weird and wonderful entrance in the crystal clear water. But it is late, this is but the first night on the motu, and the sun will come up soon, so I try to allow the rustling of the palm trees around to lull me to sleep. They sound so much like the patter of rain though that I find myself repeatedly peering from under the rain fly, to find yet again the only cloud in the sky the pale haze of the Milky Way. Reassuring as the clear sky is, I’m still a bit nervous; a couple of nearby passing squalls earlier in the day remind me that my shelter is yet to be really rain tested. And a windy rain test in the dark of night is not really an appealing prospect.

As I said, this is my first night on Motu Moemoe (dream in Tahitian), one of the many small islands forming the atoll of Manihi where I arrived earlier in the day.

[Manihi from the air]

I am here responding to an invitation to stay a few days on this private motu owned by a professional French couple, he retired military and she in the legal profession. I made the contact a couple of years ago through SEA, which this year grew to this invitation I was in a fortunate position to accept. My hosts warn me that a house is only under construction, but since I pack a survival kit of a hammock, a mosquito net and a rain fly, I insist I can rough it on my own if need be. Beyond this I know very little of what I’m about to find as I step out of the Air Tahiti plane and claim my luggage from a small hut constituting the airport. I called my host three days earlier and understand there should be someone with a boat here to pick me up and drive me to the motu. Some 15 passengers disembark with me, and, all save a couple, head to the adjoining pier where they board a few 20-odd foot open boats that roar one after the other out to absurdly green waters of the lagoon. I am soon alone, so I stroll to the small concession hut at the pier and buy a cold beer. This in hand I settle in for a wait in a patch of shade under a coconut tree.

For the record, by the way, this is something you should not do. I heard someplace a statistic that there are more people killed by falling coconuts on the Pacific Islands than there are by lightning strikes. Alas, the coconut fails to command the same respect as a good lightning storm and it's pretty hot in the noonday sun, so I take my chances and stay put. Eventually the beer and my patience run out, and I place a call to my host who apologizes and coordinates another ride for me. A boat arrives, and as we pull away from the dock, I am very aware how much the water connects this place, more so than in Rangiroa where most of the people live on two large motus. Here, the motus are smaller and every one I see has a house or two on it making it appear more developed than Rangiroa (in reality there are only 700 or so people living here). We speed by many examples of the industry that has created this development pattern; Manihi was a major center of pearl production until a precipitous decline in the price of pearls around 2003. Many of the pearl farms, visible by processing huts built on stilted platforms on top of patch reefs inside the lagoon, are now abandoned with their buildings decaying in the humid salty air.

We reach the motu after a twenty-minute fierce, jarring boat ride (one of many that make me fear permanent kidney damage) and I disembark to be greeted by the motu’s three occupants. My host welcomes me in a convivial French manner, and I also meet an American contractor, formerly of San Diego but now an expat in Tahiti, and the Tahitian foreman of the construction crew. We take a whirlwind tour of the motu, and I pick a spot to stretch my hammock in the sole, small group of coconut trees on the island. Afterwards follows a cowboy-style dinner in the one existing small building serving as the canteen, lodgings and storage for the construction effort of the main house.

And so I find myself in the hammock, shortly after sunset, contemplating the coming five days. I really don’t have any contacts here in the fishing community, thus I don’t have many expectations about what I can accomplish with the project. See here’s the thing: so far I have been hosted by maohi, or Polynesian, people. This has given me instant access to the massive family networks and guaranteed equally instant acceptance in the community. Now I am a guest in the house (metaphorically speaking…) of a fraani (French) popaa (white), so I will have to put my social skills to real use and try to make these contacts in a short few days on my own. Because there is this other thing: the French expats tend to have very little to do with the maohi society unless they married into a maohi family. And I have already caught some glimpses of the fact that my host’s relationship with the community here is pretty much commercial. He buys goods and services from people, but that is about it. No real conflict or anything, don’t get me wrong, but I’m afraid that staying on this motu will, by association, paint me with the same brush in the eyes of the good people of Manihi.

I start my campaign by talking to Teva, the Tahitian foreman the next morning. He is up with the sun, as am I, and I have some time to talk with him over breakfast coffee before the others get up. My few halting words of Tahitian make a good impression, and we soon have a rapport. He promises to talk to someone in the building crew who also fishes for a living about an interview, a fishing expedition and further contacts. So far so good!

[Wading a pass]

Later in the day Kenny the contractor invites me to take a walk with him into town, and I readily accept; I think we both yearn for an opportunity to discourse in a truly common language. I take the walk to be a playful reference to a boat ride, but Kenny is good to his word: we are going to wade into town, which is some three miles distant. See there are some four small motus between us and the town, each separated by a break anywhere from some 100 meters to 500 meters wide and about thigh deep. And it is a peculiar, beautiful walk. The passes feature a swiftly flowing current from the ocean side into the lagoon, and wading across them is much like fording a river. But a warm, sunny and altogether very pleasant river with plenty of fish who scatter away from my approaching feet! We chat on the way, and Kenny paints an interesting picture of the expatriate life in Tahiti (that’s where he lives with his Tahitian wife and kids). As in many other places I’ve visited, the expat community tends to hang out together, and I’m getting the sense that Kenny is not really adapting to Tahiti. He has a whole lot of North American expectations about how the world ought to operate that he elected not to check at the airport, but is instead carrying around like extra baggage as a small but constant source of friction for him. He is a very nice open kind of a guy with an easy horsing-around sense of humor, and I feel free to tell him as much in the few days I’m there. The first day, though, I am a mere vessel as Kenny’s floodgates open and he speaks pretty much non-stop for the entire day.

In town I go check out the fishing fleet (only one potimarara and assorted small skiffs) and the pass for any spearfishing activity, but since this is Sunday the village is pretty deserted save some kids playing on the street. The place completely lacks the charm of Tiputa; most of the houses are new pre-fab types ringed by ugly cinderblock fences, giving this place a sort of army camp kind of a feel. Eventually, with some provisions in our backpacks, we manage to hitch a boat ride back to the motu.

The second night is much like the first. I get up a couple of times to admire the stars, the palm trees still sound like rain and overall the experience has a kind of dream-like quality to it. I spend the second day snorkeling and helping with the construction, and Teva talks to Terri in the construction crew who promises to take me fishing with him. He also says he can arrange an interview with the man in town who runs the only fish weir in operation in Manihi. I also look forward to wading over to the next motu to talk to the owner of the small family-operated pearl farm there. Though not strictly fishing, this form of aquaculture in a place like Manihi occupies such an important role in the island’s economy that I’m very interested to hear about it from a first-hand source.

[Giant clam]

In the mean time I’m getting ready for another night under the stars with some trepidation, as there have been more squalls around today. My rain fly and hammock survived just fine, but none the less I use some dried palm fronds to create a bit more wind and rain shelter by weaving them together and hanging them to help block the gap between the rain fly and the ground. In these squalls the rain can come down at a pretty good angle and this ought to help. We’ll see…

February 14 – Samedi – Tiputa, Rangiroa and Manihi

2009-03-04T14:07:00.043-05:00

You hear this often: We can’t starve here. This claim refers to the condition of these islands where food really does seem to be for the taking in the form of fish, fruit and coconuts. You also hear the opposite interpretation, particularly of the Tuamotus, as a hostile place with scarce resources and poor water supplies. It is difficult to reconcile these two views in light of what I’ve seen traveling through the islands so far. Baguette, corned beef and rice being integral parts of the local diet, it is hard for a casual observer to filter out how the dinner table would look long-term without those staples.

Then again, changes in diet have accompanied huge changes in the social fabric of the Polynesian culture as well. By all accounts, village life was once much more a communal affair, and a large part of the getting of food was done together. In the Tuamotus this involved digging large pits down to the fresh (actually brackish) water table, to be filled with compost and used for communal gardens. But it was fishing that really expressed this cooperative nature of living of the Paumotu. The best example of this was the use of communally constructed and maintained fish weirs (or ahua huiraatira), of which there were one or two per village.

Notice the past tense. In interviews with the elder fishermen, the communal weirs vanished in the 60’s or 70’s, depending on the island and the village. The immediate reason seems to have been that the copra boats plying the waters between the islands and Papeete started buying fish as well, and the sharing of cash proved less easily done than sharing the fish. All this, by the way, coincided with the vast economic pressures brought to the archipelago by an army of technicians, administrators and soldiers involved in the French nuclear testing program in 1964.

Ok, so there are no more communal weirs in the Northern Tuamotus, but some private weirs still exist, and with Hérvé’s help I managed to visit one in the neighboring village of Avatoru. I should add that Hérvé’s family used to keep a weir right in the Tiputa pass, but it was destroyed some years ago by a storm. Hérvé shared with me an old family photo from the late 70’s showing family members tending the weir, and though much of the structure is still there, they have yet to put it back into service for reasons that are still not quite clear to me.

[Hérvé's family weir]

With all this playing in my head I find myself in an old, leaky, fiberglass skiff heading west from the village of Avatoru and across the pass. The pass itself is smaller than the one in Tiputa, but a motu on the lagoon side splits it into two channels, and we are headed to the farther channel and around the motu. Flying out of Rangiroa to Manihi today I managed to get a good picture out of the plane window: the motu is on the left and you can see the weir as a faint dark line in the shape of the letter N against the light reef (follow the edge of the channel from the motu up and torward the right).

Driving the boat is Punua who is, yes, another uncle of Hérvé’s. We are accompanied by another fisherman who works for the commune and who, given Hérvé’s position in the municipal council, has taken a council van to drive us to Avatoru. Before embarking on the boat, I interview Punua on camera at his house on the lagoon with Hérvé translating. During the interview Punua holds in the crook of a big arm a perfectly tranquil grandson who examines me intensely. I have a strong impulse to start trading expressions with him. Since this would completely blow my cover as a serious investigator, I stifle the urge and keep my face in the viewfinder.

Back in the boat, the drive is a short 10-minute affair in the pass. The current is flowing out, and the old outboard is making a loud racket inching us along the edge of the swiftly moving water. Our destination appears as a collection of poles sticking out of the water on the edge of the pass in what I estimate to be about 2.5 meters of water. We slide along the aggregation, and what from the distance looked like a pretty random gathering now resolves into three organized rows of poles. We tie up to four of them, Punua and I don masks, and I follow him in the water outside the weir. He scoots inside the enclosure over chicken wire tied to 5cm metal poles forming the frame of the structure. Inside there are fish. Oh my, are there fish. A huge school of ature (a small jack) swims in a lazy circle in the inner chamber of the weir with a couple of stingrays and a large green moray getting fatter by the minute. As the curtain of fish splits here and there, I catch glimpses of small sharks, triggerfish, trevally and goodness knows what else!

Yes, you could feed a village this way! And the weir is not just a way to catch fish, but also a way to keep them really, really fresh for a long time. Just go to the ahua and collect what you need for the day and then come back the next day for some more. Ok, so it is not quite as simple as that, there is strong seasonality among the most abundant species like ature and oeo, but Punua tells me he gets a mix of different species in smaller numbers all through the year.

The weir incorporates two large chambers shaped like inverted V’s, aimed at the pass. At the apex of each V is an enclosure that opens to the main chamber via a mesh funnel with an opening some 50 cm in diameter. It is this funnel that allows the fish in, but poses too large a puzzle for them to figure out how to use it as an exit. And here they are, providing a steady flow of fish for Punua’s roadside fish stand, as well as local schools and restaurants.

So there it is staring one in the face: the irony of our modern condition. Is it preferable to go to work for money with which to buy fish or to not work (so much) and just go get your own fish? Or work with your neighbors to secure fish for all, as the weir does represent an investment in material and labor that is too big for any individual or small family unit. Contemplating such things, it is difficult to steer away from notions of South Seas idyllic village life, of a life with few cares and simple pleasures. Funny enough, reading through the works of Kenneth Emory and Frank Stimson, two ethnographers who traveled extensively through the Tuamotus in the 1920’s and 30’s, this is an image that emerges. Both gents, employed by the Bishop Museum of Honolulu, at times went completely native replete with their own houses and wahines and stayed on islands for months at a time.

It also difficult not to worry about the future of these islands. Though families and communities are still very important in the Tuamotu life, an intensifying cash economy brings with it the pressure to exploit marine resources. Earlier, I visited an enclosure where poisson sale, or salt fish, is being dried for market. The species used for salting is the oeo, a species of snapper that, during the new moons in November through February, is fished in large numbers by jigging in the lagoon. I interviewed two of the five fishermen who run the salt fish business and obtained a rough estimate of some seven to ten tons of salted, dried oeo being shipped to Tahiti every year in those four months. The salt fish business goes back at least to the 1940’s, but today there are more people involved and the fishermen complain of a dearth of fish.

Swimming in the weir, though, abundance is really the only fitting image. I reluctantly follow Punua over the mesh and back into the boat. In the distance there are the remains of many other weirs, disused and in disrepair for reasons that, despite my questioning, still remain somewhat of a mystery. The Paumotu have a reputation in Tahiti as being lazy, not wanting to do much for tomorrow today. If there is something to that reputation, it is hard for me to sit in judgment. I suppose you can go and fish intensively for a few days, freeze the catch and eat frozen fish for a few weeks – and pay for a freezer and expensive electricity. Or you can go get your fish fresh by extending some effort every day. Which way would you pick?

With these thoughts I get ready to leave Rangiroa. I will miss this place, the village of Tiputa and Hérvé and his family in particular. I’ve eaten many meals at his parents outdoor dining table, paddled a va’a (outrigger canoe) with his brother Mamia, drank some beers with his pals at the local magazin – I have had a fantastic time here and am loath to leave. Hérvé departs on a flight after mine for Papeete, and his father drives us to the airport in his 15’ aluminum skiff. We say our reluctant goodbyes at the airport, but I know I’ll be back here before long! Thank you, my friend!

February 13 – Vendredi – Tiputa, Rangiroa

2009-03-02T07:50:00.017-05:00

A couple of busy days have kept me from writing, but today a series of very impressive squalls with lots of lightning and torrential tropical rain are keeping me indoors. The rain started last night, and this morning there are deep puddles of standing water around the village. Some dramatic lightning strikes around the house shook things up, and the cisterns filled and overflowed. When it rains the Paumotu are happy, because that is their main water supply. There are wells, but the water in them is brackish and not really used unless the need is dire indeed.

I realize I have been writing a whole lot about spear fishing, and it is time to shift gears. Still, I have continued to accompany Hérvé daily for his fishing, as it really is part of food shopping here. He is also traveling to Papeete on Sunday to see his kids there, and is busy stashing fish in the freezer to bring with him for the clan. He certainly isn’t alone in that behavior; a lot of people bring a cooler as part of their luggage check-in at Air Tahiti and all of them are full of fish. The same coolers make the return trip full of meat and veggies, so there is this constant stream of food in and out of the islands that bypasses the commercial sector entirely. Family ties are incredibly important here, and this is one of the forms by which the family members look after each other. I should add that the family notion extends far beyond the parent/child units, and includes brothers, nieces, cousins etc. Indeed the term cousin is used in a very liberal way here, nobody makes a distinction between your aunt's daughter and a second cousin thrice removed. Family is family.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent a day with Hérvé’s uncle Aniki (pictured above) and his friend Florest gill netting on the shallow reef. The site is the shallow backreef I described in a previous post (Feb. 9th) adjacent to their beach hut at the mouth of the pass. The neighboring picture shows the pass with Tiputa to the left, and you can see the shallow reef as the gray zone between the white surf at the reef crest and the shoreline. (Aniki's house is just above and to the right of the big breaking swell nearest the pass, the first building off the road coming around the large coconut walk (or grove) toward the pass from the right). We meet them at 0630 at the hut where they are just finishing folding the nylon monofilament net for the morning’s set.

[The Tiputa Pass]

A few more words about Aniki and Florest (pictured at left) should be said here. Both gents look like they were sculpted from the roots of the earth. They are probably in their late 50’s but in a way seem completely ageless; powerfully built men with faces that look perpetually serene. Aniki in particular would blend right in with the Rasta community in Jamaica. Having spent quite a bit time there and having met some of the bredren (brethren in Patois) under similar circumstances, the big differences are language and the cap; religious Rastas keep their hair covered. Oh yes, and the similarity extends to smoking the herb (Rasta word), as there is clearly some serious paka (Hawaiian term for the same) being combusted in the hut. Not that this is a rare thing in Polynesia - paka is really wide spread.

Aniki and Florest both work with wood and coconut fibers to produce sculpture and jewelry, this in addition to fishing. Oh yes, and they make the didgeridoos and flutes around the place, primarily for their own use in the hut. At times they seem to retreat in almost a trance as they are harmonizing together and something else beyond and out of reach for us uninitiated. Though the language barrier keeps us from talking about much beyond fishing, they seem, I dunno, kind of sagely.

Setting the net is simple enough. Finding a big piece of rock next to the coral rubble beach, Aniki strides through the thigh-deep water toward the reef crest and 2 meter tall surf, ducking down at times to tuck the net behind some particular rock. The back reef resembles a swiftly flowing river because of all the water the surf is spilling over the reef. I follow him, struggling for balance while leaning into the current and searching for a footing. As the net approaches the reef crest and the strongest current, Aniki changes course and lays down the last 15 meters almost parallel to the reef. The operation is over in just a few minutes, and we repair to shore to wait. It is a good time to talk, and I record an interview with Aniki about his methods of fishing and the changes he has witnessed in the years past. Interestingly, though, he echoes other statements I’ve heard that the fish in the pass aren’t as numerous as they once were. The fishing in the shallow reef by net he says to be just as good as it ever was.

Every once in a while Aniki wades into the water some 40 meters upstream of the net and slowly walks toward the net while tossing rock around him. As they are chased into the net, I can see the sleek forms of fish dart from around rocks and shoot downstream toward the net. It is clear that they perceive the net, as most of them change course to swim parallel to it in the swiftly flowing water. Not all are as lucky, and every time Aniki goes on his fish herding missions he walks back along the net to check it. By the way, I should add that he walks barefoot. I repeat, he walks barefoot! For those of you who have explored shallow reef environments and coral rock and rubble shores, this will probably produce mental images of bloodied, mangled toes and lacerated soles, subsequent inevitable infection, gangrene, double amputation and a life hobbling about on crutches. Aniki, however, is unperturbed by such visions, and I refrain myself from asking to inspect the steel reinforcements that surely must be there. Then again, for a guy sculpted from the roots of the earth this must be completely normal.

So we spend the morning chatting, throwing rocks and inspecting the net. At around 10:00 Florest fetches a couple of coconuts, Aniki slices up a fish for some poisson cru with lime and a baguette materializes from someplace – cuisine maison for these guys. Oh, and Aniki takes a long pull on a bottle full of… fafaru. Characteristically, he offers it to me with a twinkle in his eye, but I simply don’t have the constitution to accept.

The morning isn’t exactly a bust, but the catch is not overwhelming. There is a single gorgeous surgeonfish (Ume) that Aniki carries back to the shore - in his mouth – for my viewing pleasure. I take some pictures and we return the fish to the water. Otherwise, the catch is some dozen parrotfish and mullets. The net comes up around 11:00 and Hérvé and I head out to do some spear fishing for the afternoon, intent on returning in the evening for the night set of the net.

We’re back at half past seven, and walk to this nice looking house a stone’s throw from the hut. This, I’m told, is Aniki’s house. Ok, so this is new information I try to square with the previous image I had. This is not the first time I find myself wondering exactly how is it that some of the people make their living around here. But I digress; there is a thread here that runs through the culture, the economy and the politics of modern Polynesia that warrants its own future entry on this blog.

Right, so on the patio Aniki and Florest are finishing folding the net, and we follow them on the dark beach. This time the net is set (with the help of a flashlight) some three hundred meters further away from the pass, and we sit down on the beach to wait. The moon rises early and full over the tall surf in magnificent orange before brightening to the silver glow that whitens the coral rubble beach and makes the breaking surf sparkle. I wade into the water and stand transfixed by the moment; the surf, the warm wind, the water and the sky combine and the island feels suspended somehow, immersed in these elements in a way that seems almost mystical. As I soak it all in, Aniki resumes his routine of checking the net, and this time the fish come in much more quickly. Nae nae (a small jack), vete (goatfish) and anae (mullet) make up the most of the catch. Aniki calls an end to fishing after about two hours and some twenty fish. You take what you need, you can come back when the need arises. He gives us half a dozen fish that Hérvé later shares with the family next door. We say our goodbyes, and make our way back to Hérvé’s house. It being now several hours past sunset, we quickly retire. Falling asleep I can hear the surf above the rustling of the coconut palms outside my open window.

February 11 – Jeudi – Tiputa, Rangiroa

2009-02-28T08:58:00.005-05:00

Reflections on spear fishing.

For us from the higher latitudes and areas with really productive coastal waters, it seems implausible that fishing with spears could be a significant or effective means to collect fish. And I suppose if you take an industrial trawler with a crew of six and compare the amount of fish caught per person per unit time, the spear fishing effort looks modest at best. But then again, a coral reef is a very different kind of place to fish. The nature of the corals themselves make using a piece of gear contacting the bottom a hazardous enterprise at best – nets will snag and tear unless set by hand. Another large difference is the fish. Their diversity is tremendous, and while some species are pretty easy to catch by hook, others can be all but impossible. And they all taste different, so if you really want to eat, say, Oiri (Triggerfish), the most effective way to go get it actually is by spear.

And the quantities caught are not necessarily that modest either. I interviewed one professional fisherman in Rangiroa who reported catching around 90 Parai (a species of surgeonfish) per week for the local hotel. Given that these fish can reach two or more kg (5 pounds) in weight, the weekly catch can easily exceed 400 pounds and the monthly catch is likely well over half a ton of this one fish. By one fisherman. Multiply this by some tens of people in Tiputa and Avatoru, and the amounts start to become pretty significant.

So the pluses are these: you get to select exactly what you want to catch and your equipment investment is very small (spear gun, mask, snorkel, fins, plastic tote, a knife). The downside is you better like being in the water. And you better start early, because the kind of skill I see these people exhibit comes only with childhood conditioning and training.

Is spear fishing a traditional technique of fishing, though? I’ve been trying to get some answers about how long the current form with the rubber strap powered guns (pupuhi) has been around here, and how much it differed from the preceding method. The answers I’ve been getting from people in their 60’s and 70’s is pretty consistent among the islands. The preceding technique employed a spear called patia, some 2.5 meters long over all. The first two meters was a wooden handle constructed from Puru or Aito trees, and the last 50 cm was the barbed steel spear. The reach of this weapon would have been about two meters plus the length of the arm thrust used to deliver it to the target. The transition between the two occurred sometime between 1965 and 1970, almost simultaneously on all the islands I have visited.

It is useful to think about the advantages of the modern pupuhi over patia. The velocity of the spear (auri) delivered from pupuhi is faster than the fish escape response, and the reach of the weapon is much higher – up to 5 meters or so. To put it in practical terms, even I can catch a fish with pupuhi. Toss in the outboard motor and the ability to range further faster, the game has changed dramatically since the late 60’s on the spear fishing front. To a person, the current generation of spear fishermen does not think it possible to catch fish with patia today. This is an interesting measure of the number of possible changes.

Perhaps fish behavior has changed. I’m not an expert in this field and so don’t know how likely this is. Certainly fish learn, but often their curiosity brings them to within range of the pupuhi so any change certainly hasn’t been universal. Then again it seems from my casual observations that places with the most fishing effort also has the most easily spooked fish. Why would patia fishing not have had the same effect on fish? The sound of the spear?

Maybe the current generation of fishermen are just softer, slower or less talented than the people of old. This seems unlikely. Certainly they are trained in and used to the modern technique, but it seems really unlikely to me that they could have much success with the patia however skilled they were in its use in the environment they are fishing. What much success means here is completely open to question; perhaps in the days of old you went fishing and didn’t expect to catch anything necessarily, whereas today the expectation is to come home with a whole pile of fish. It would be really interesting to put a patia in the hands of a good spear fisherman for a month and see what happens!

What all the fishermen seem to agree on is that there is less fish. Some blame scuba divers and the resulting bubbles, some blame global warming, some blame themselves. My working hypothesis is that there is just less fish and the ones that are there are smaller, so the nature of the problem is likely the lack of suitable targets to hit with a patia.

And finally, how traditional a way of fishing is the use of the patia? Without a mask, hitting a fish underwater seems impossible, so this method is likely no older than pearl diving, introduced sometime in the mid 1800’s (I’ll check this date – a bit unsure of it) with the use of glass-faced underwater goggles. We do know that spears have been in use for much longer, used for fish in the shallow back reefs where you can hit them from the surface. There are many written accounts of this fishing technique in the post European contact period, and there is a long archaeological record of spear tips from all around the Polynesian islands.

That is probably enough on this topic. Just a sample of the kinds of things I’ve been thinking about.

February 10 – Mardi – Tiputa, Rangiroa

2009-02-26T07:42:00.013-05:00

It has been a busy and productive three days! Hérvé and I are getting along famously, his house is a very comfortable place and I’m rather smitten with the village of Tiputa. There is a school in the village that serves the northern Tuamotu region, which means there are a lot of young people around. Right around the corner from the Mairie (municipal offices) and next to the school is the sports center, a roofed structure used for volleyball and footsal. For the uninitiated, footsal is a variant of soccer adapted for indoor play on smaller fields and with five players, popular enough around the world to have its own world cup. The local league is busy and I go watch a couple of highly entertaining games. There are stands, and these games are definitely events in Tiputa, complete with outdoor concession offerings and vocal audience participation.

I am getting the hang of spear fishing - we’ve been going out every day since I got here. Or so I though before today, before Hérvé announced we were going to fish the incoming current right at the mouth of the pass. Now, he didn’t mean the peak current but the period of slack water between the tides and the hour immediately following it – this gives me some comfort and indicates he is not totally crazy, as the lagoon of Rangiroa is huge and not a place I want to get swept out to either. Ok, so I’m willing to try, as this is something that is completely normal to these folks (ie. return from fishing is expected as a matter of course), and I don’t want to appear a complete wuss.

We go to the entry spot well ahead of time, as he wants to introduce me to his uncle and a friend, both by his description fishermen and artisans. I am curious, and get even more so as we approach a low thatched hut overlooking the mouth of the pass. Emanating from within is the sound of a duet between a didgeridoo and a nose flute, and as we duck in to the hut my eyes take in the sight of this magnificent rasta guy sitting on a low stool by a pile of woodchips blowing into his didgeridoo. The sound of the nose flute comes from another corner where another sagely looking man is totally engrossed in producing the notes. Eventually they notice us and a round of welcomes ensues. My few words of Tahitian create a favorable impression, and with Hérvé’s help I tell them about myself. They respond with an invitation to join them the next day for some fishing with a net right in front of the hut. It appears that the lunar cycle is right for fishing for a certain kind of parrotfish on the shallow reef and that these gentlemen are the only ones using a net on the shallow reef in Tiputa at the present. I am grateful for the opportunity.

At this point I should probably explain a bit about the terrain. The crest of the reef on the seaward side rings the island some 50-100 meters distant. Between the shallow crest (out of the water during low tide) and the island is a very shallow back reef environment that is a distinct habitat from the steep slope of the fore reef. Only about a meter or so deep, the back reef receives a continuous and massive flow of water from the swell that breaks over the reef crest and spills landward. This water must go someplace, and those places are mostly the shallow breaks between the motus. At the pass, the reef crest rounds the corners of the islands forming the pass and runs for a bit toward the center of the atoll, parallel to the pass. At about a third of the way in the reef closes in with the island, and at this point all the water piling in due to the surf up front spills into the pass. It is this back reef environment as it curves into the pass that we’ll fish tomorrow. Today Hérvé and I are going to fish the outer edge of the reef.

Ok, so I’m a bit nervous as we enter the water. Hérvé guides our progress across the back reef to the edge where several things are happening. Though we are a bit inside the pass, some of the surf still gets in and you don’t really want to be surprised by it. Another thing is that the back reef water is starting to spill into the pass. And then there is the fact that we are standing at the edge of the vertical fore reef slope. Hérvé pauses here in the waist-deep water, observes the current for some 5 minutes while I hang on as the occasional swell breaks around us. He pronounces things to be OK, we quickly pull on our fins and masks and fall forward into the blue.

If you have ever observed a front loading washing machine in action and wondered how it would feel to be inside – well I’ve got some insight. The water pouring into the pass from the back reef makes it necessary to keep swimming toward the reef crest. Get too close, and the occasional swell picks you up for a frothy ride right to the top of the reef crest. There are a lot of small air bubbles continually churned in at the top limiting visibility, so I keep losing sight of Hérvé. Eventually I figure it out, and just try to stay below the surface where the incoming ocean water is completely clear and the visibility is great. I am towing the tub, and since this is the sharkiest of the places in the pass, try to stick as close as I can to Hérvé to minimize his need to swim around with bleeding, speared fish.

He does his usual – with minimum fuss glides gracefully down the steep edge, peeks around the ledges, lies on top of them in wait. And, needless to say, brings home the bacon. Paihere, Tapatai, Naenae and Honae (different species of Jacks) start piling into the box, and eventually I manage to relax and get busy with my camera. The visibility is phenomenal, and I follow Hérvé as far down as I can. There are fish aplenty here. I’m attracted to large schools of Manini and Aupapa that seem rather indifferent to my presence. It is not a great place for photography, though, as keeping station without a lot of swimming is impossible, and swimming makes the camera move a lot. So eventually I just observe, observe Hérvé spear and the almost magical appearance of the sharks in the immediate aftermath. Today the only loss is to a very aggressive and large Oiri (Triggerfish) that manages to take three big bites out of the back of a large Tapatai as Hérvé surfaces towing it behind him at a shark-safe distance.

After an hour or so we head back toward our launching spot. However, conditions have changed with the speeding current and we have to let it carry us some 300 meters further down the pass to get out of the water. Not a problem, as Hérvé guides to his sister’s house on the water where we clean the fish and ourselves. He also demonstrates an interesting technique in fish cleaning on couple of small Naenae: first you gut the fish, then pull the skin off. After skinning, make a number of cuts (to the bone) both laterally and vertically on both sides. What is created is a fish ready for some lime juice, a bit of salt and perhaps some miti ha’arii (coconut milk) for a quick poisson cru on the run. Good stuff, too! At this point the afternoon has progressed to around 4:00 and we walk (ok, I stagger…) back to Hérvé’s house. All the young guys I see around are remarkably fit, and I am developing a keen understanding of exactly why this is. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and perhaps a bit more passive perch from which to observe the proceedings.

February 7 – Samedi – Tiputa, Rangiroa

2009-02-20T21:21:00.017-05:00

Rangiroa is not all that far from Tahiti, only some 200 miles and a quick 40-minute flight away. The speed of the flight does not seem to allow for sufficient time to adjust to the change in my circumstances, and I feel a bit apprehensive as I scan the small crowd of people waiting in the open hall of Rangiroa airfield for Hérvé. I have no clue how to recognize him, but I hope the brand new white Service de la Peche hat Estellio gave me as a parting gift will cue him in. The crowd thins quickly and, just as quickly, there is an inkling of recognition as I approach a tall guy who seems to be in his early thirties or so. An exchange of names follows and Hérvé leads me to a white minibus with “Commune de Rangiroa” written on it.

During the brief 5 minute van ride I gaze at the blazing white coral, the intensely green palm trees and the equally absurdly blue ocean. I don’t really know what is going on, but after some conversation I understand that there is a Rangiroa municipal government meeting in progress, and that Hérvé needs to go back to it – seeing as he's an elected member from his village of Tiputa. We reach a modern-looking building compound, and I timidly follow him into an air-conditioned meeting room with some twenty representatives and the commune mayor, or Tavana, present. I take a seat along a wall and listen to a measured debate taking place around the large quadrangle of tables in the middle of the room. I do like the sound of Tahitian, I get the sense that words are selected carefully and spoken forcefully – a sense that oratory is cherished both by the speaker and the audience.

After some twenty minutes the meeting wraps up and I briefly shake hands with the Tavana as Hérvé introduces me to him - then off we go to the same minibus. The bus, you see, is the official transportation for representatives, and will take us all the way to the village of Tiputa. The single road leading eastward takes us to the Tiputa Pass that divides the village from the island, or motu, we are currently on. This is the fact of life on Rangiroa (and most other Tuamotu atolls as well). Though some 70km in length, the narrow rim of the coral reef that extends above surface and supports terrestrial life is broken up into many, many, dare I say many motus of varying sizes. Between the motus are passes, ranging in depth from a foot or two to 60 feet like that of the major Tiputa pass. More about these passes later – they are important in many ways.

At the pass we are met by a small utility ferry, the van drives on board, and we get door-to-door service to Hérvé’s house in the village. And a lovely house it is - a modern, airy, two bedroom abode Hérvé finished building just two years ago as he (very justly) proudly tells me while giving the welcome tour. The house is situated near the pass in the middle of a large coconut grove. In the late afternoon light the trees are a magnificent sight and, together with the distant surf beating on the outside beach of the island, give this place an instantly comfortable feel. I settle in as Hérvé sets the table for dinner - uncharacteristically not fish, but franks and beans. I soon find out that the pace of life in Tiputa follows a very natural rhythm of the sun. You get up with it (the approximately one million roosters in the village help should light cues not be enough), and the absence of it drives you to bed. We talk a bit into the evening, but at eight o’clock it seems perfectly natural to crawl into bed.

So the next morning it’s up at about 6:00. I follow Hérvé out of the house to go to his parents' house from which he is to take me on the very first fishing outing. The walk would be a short five minutes, or about as far as you can walk in Tiputa without running into water. Would be, but isn’t. Everyone knows everyone else (as you would expect in a village of 600 people), and Hérvé is someone to know. So, we stop numerous times to say hellos as he greets this uncle or that cousin. The atmosphere, the sights, the people, all this make me think that this is one seriously pleasant and charming place. Oh yes, and the stop at the magazin where we pick up the daily baguettes.

Eventually we make it to our destination, which is right on the water. Under a permanent awning is the year-round dining table/hangout spot where I meet Hérvé’s father and mother, his younger brother Mamia and his kid sister. Back to a fish and bread diet, we eat quickly as Hérvé and Mamia start gathering their spear fishing kit. I pick up a sharpening stone and sharpen a spear while they set up. Then we wait for the current in the pass to turn. You see, the current is everything. Why? Because there is such a humongous amount of it, that’s why. Well over six knots in speed at the peak, the outbound current is a seriously bad thing to enter as a swimmer. The outbound trip to the great blue yonder would be swift, the return leg uncertain at best. With a little sea running against the current, there are some incredibly large standing waves at the mouth of the pass through which a bunch of dolphins are leaping in a great display of marine mammal athleticism. Yes, to wait is good!

So we wait for about an hour, chatting about this and that. I learn some new Tahitian – opope is current, the lagoon is roto and tua is the ocean. Hence opope roto is the incoming current and opope tua is the outflowing current. We enter the water around 1:00 as the tide is turning and the current starts flowing back in. Heading toward the pass we move through two clearly different waters, with filaments of the warmer, more turbid lagoon water folding in and mixing with the incoming clear and cooler ocean water. The lagoon water is sticking closer to shore, while the ocean water is starting to pour in faster mid channel; it is the interface between the two where Hérvé and Mamia concentrate their efforts. The bottom is anywhere from 30 to 60 feet in depth, and in places barely visible from the surface.

One crucial difference between spear fishing in Tahiti and here is that here everyone is towing a floating plastic tote behind them, and I see five other buckets bobbing at the surface some ways from us. I volunteer to tow ours, and the utility of the bucket becomes abundantly clear very quickly. There are sharks. Lots of sharks. They are mostly the familiar reef Black-Tipped and White-Tipped variety with an occasional Grey mixed in. These are not big sharks, ranging from 4 to 6 feet in length and not at all interested in human size prey. But boy are they interested in the speared fish! They are just as adept at finding an injured fish as advertised, and the technique of not losing a) your fish and b) accidentally some body appendage to them involves surfacing while towing the spear - and the speared fish - at the end of the spear gun and the 10’ stout nylon line. The sharks stick to the bottom, and as soon as the prey is mid-water, the conflict is pretty much over.

The expedition takes about two hours, and the brothers pile about a dozen fish into the tote. They are far more active in their technique than Jean or Baby in Teahupoo. Because the water is deeper, they scan the bottom on descent for targets other than the ledge or group of fish they saw from the surface. Not so much creeping and lying in ambush here, this is more like a search. Sometimes they will wait for a particular group of fish to approach within range while lying on the bottom, but because of the depth they have less time at their disposal. And clearly they have a shopping list, a shopping list that overlooks a lot of what passes as desirable in Tahiti. The fish are bigger and more numerous, of this there is no doubt.

This catch is only for the family to eat, and they are content with the dozen in the tote. We head back toward the house some quarter mile distant. When we arrive, we set to cleaning the fish at the water's edge. I dutifully record the species and sizes of the fish, and, after the cleaning of fish, gear and selves, Hérvé puts an opened coconut in my hands for drinking. We sit around chatting, Hérvé and his family talking away in Tahitian, and I’m very content to sit back and listen in in a blissful post-long-swim stupor.

February 5 – Jeudi – Papeete

2009-02-18T13:45:00.012-05:00

As quickly as it started, my stay in Teahupoo is now over. Back in Papeete and on the ship for just a day, the past week seems positively surreal contemplating it now with the ship as a very familiar backdrop. The last two days consisted of another spearfishing outing, a trip to the Taravao fish market and a farewell soiree at the parish house.

The spearfishing trip incluldes myself, Jean, Estelio and Baby Maoni, a many-time French and Pacific spearfishing champion now in his seventies. He is incredibly spry, though, and has absolutely no trouble keeping up with his protégé Jean on the fishing front. He has these friendly twinkling eyes, and though, again, there is no shared language, we hit it off very well. We take off on his boat, a small outboard-equipped Potimarara at around six in the morning, heading south inside the reef. The itinerary has a little sightseeing and more fishing in it, and we begin by following the reef further around the island than I’ve been before. The weather is indifferent with some squalls and occasional rain around, but this, with the early morning light just seems to intensify the greens and black of the steep mountain sides to our left.

There is a portion of the southernmost Tahitit Iti where the reef actually stops for a while, where there is no reef crest to offer protection from the swell and the waves served by the Southeasterly trades. Before we get to this rough batch, though, the reef turns into the island, and we must cross a very shallow, coral boulder-strewn bit of the waters, and Baby slows the boat down amidst the surf that is now breaking everywhere. These are his home waters and, given that no prayers have been uttered yet, I try to relax and enjoy the show. He picks one particularly large swell, guns the engine and we leap over some boulders that seem much too close to the surface in the clear water. I clutch the camera and eye the distance to the shore to scope for a feasible bailout plan, but soon regret my timidity as we are, predictably, safely through.

After inspecting the sheer cliff faces, a cave opening to the sea, and a small steep-sided and incredibly lush bay, we turn around and head back North toward the reef. Running the same roiling gauntlet we stop just beyond, anchor the boat with what seems a purely symbolic small hook, and enter the water. I follow Baby as he fishes the edge of the reef, but soon start losing sight of him as he effortlessly glides down past 30, 40 feet. Eventually I give up trying to follow him and, sticking closer to the reef crest, content myself with inspecting the shallower reef instead. We get back around midday and clean the fish and the gear. Afterwards I take a small walk around Teahupoo as this is really my last day here.

The last evening turns into another party, thrown in my honor! More dancing and eating is followed by some farewell words and a dozen shell and flower necklaces are hung around my neck. Leaving seems like a cruel form of punishment.

The next day Estellio drives me to Keitapu’s house where I spend a delightful day with him, his wife Hillary and their two young sons. Keitapu takes me spearfishing on the reef in front of his house, and we enter the water via stairs leading down the six-foot drop from his patio to the water. I have a Pupuhi (speargun), a search image for Parai (a species of surgeonfish we’re after), some quick instruction as what not to do with the spear and we’re off. With a speargun in my hand I realize I must look at the reef very differently than my usual rote. Lots of diving on the reef looking at corals has really trained my eye to take in the fish as these mobile things that flit in and out of one’s field of view. Now I try to follow them, anticipate their moves. We arrive at the sport Keitapu has in mind, a 20’ deep section of the reef shoaling quickly so I can see the underside of the breaking swell to my left. He gets off the first shot just ahead of me and…a hit. Then another. And another. Turns out he is really good at this. It also turns out I am not. After many, many shots I manage to score a hit, but even then the fish seems only perturbed by the event as the spear somehow pushes it out of the way.

The consolation is some encouraging words from Keitapu and a first-hand initiation into the fine points of reef fish tasting. While we clean them, he cuts little morsels off the fish and I start understanding the vast differences both in texture and taste between the different species. Keitapu has shot about a dozen fish - half Parai and the other half a careful selection to illustrate the differences. The dinner is a truly exquisite affair with the Parai served raw as Poisson Cru with some lime juice, jalapeño peppers, garlic and a hint of salt. Needless to say all ingredients save the salt are from their garden. The rest of the fish are gently steamed to preserve the taste and texture differences. This is followed with a copious quantity of fresh fruit as Keitapu and Hillary warn me of the veggieless and fruitless future awaiting me in the Tuamotus. Once again I go to bed feeling like the day contained simply too much to fit in a mere 24 hours.

And now back on the boat. I invited Estellio and everyone else to come and visit the SEA ship in Papeete, and he was able to come together with some of the family and friends. Seven people in all, Estellio’s extended cab pick-up is loaded with three bunches of bananas, breadfruit, a box of avocados, papayas and some limes. Their gift to the ship!

Tomorrow it is off to the airport and to Rangiroa. I am to stay with someone named Hérve in the village of Tiputa, which is about the sum total I know about the immediate future. This has been an amazing week on all fronts, but now it’s off to the Tuamotus!

February 1st – Dimanche – Teahupoo

2009-02-18T13:38:00.022-05:00

On Tahitian hospitality.

I am writing this late in the evening of another amazing day. No fishing, no water-based adventures, but cultural immersion instead. Last night was the birthday of Gineta, my hostess here. Her family and friends gathered around to celebrate. Present were some thirty people - sisters, in-laws, friends, all with kids of varying ages. But before I get to that, I should describe the situation here a bit better.

My hosts are Estellio and Gineta, a couple in their late forties/early fifties. They have three kids, and formally live in the town of Taravao about a fifteen minute drive away. Estellio works for the Service de Peche (fisheries service), and has generously promised to both arrange for housing and some contacts with the local fishing community. Gineta does all the cooking and together they take care of the Parish House. Indeed it was Estellio who largely built this house and, because of the small size of the congregation (only some six families), has somewhat the run of it. He prefers this place to his house in Taravao in that it is directly on the water in a setting reminiscent of his home on the atoll of Rangiroa. And after being here a couple of days I can only concur – this is a very nice little corner of paradise. Together they maintain the kitchen, work the orchards around the church, and generally keep the place up.

Since I arrived there has been a steady stream of friends coming and hanging out during the afternoon hours. Jean, the spear fisherman, and his wife Joana are here quite a bit as are cousin Louisa and her husband, the deacon Ernest. You put these six people around a table and what follows is much hilarity. I understand absolutely none of the rapid flow of Frehitian (French and Tahitian mixed evenly), but the peals of laughter are enough to bring a smile to my face. Everyone seems absolutely nonplussed by the presence of this strange person in their circle, and I quickly relax and am content to try to snatch a few words of the conversation here and there.

Right, and I should mention that Jean and Joana are complete Elvis nuts. I mean name-your-son-Elvis kind of Elvis nuts. Jean apparently in earlier life wore his hair Elvis style, and can do a mean Elvis air guitar complete with the moves. Why do I tell you this? Because the substantial boom box in the corner churns out a continuous soundtrack of Elvis. Elvis on infinite repeat. And not the young Elvis either I’m afraid, but the worst excesses of the Fat Elvis during the darkest moments of his Las Vegas career. I hope not to offend anyone by saying this, but a drug overdose seems like the next logical step for what pours out of the speakers. The juxtaposition of this and the life and people around me is something to behold.

Moving on, however, to the birthday soirée. The spread of the table was as lavish as it was broad in scope. The modern Tahitian family is a mélange of Polynesia and Europe, and accordingly on the table is everything from a potato salad to traditional Paumotu-style grilled fish. Potato salad being fairly familiar to us all, let me describe the traditional Tahitian end of the menu. The staples are uru (breadfruit), taro, various fish, coconut milk and, more recent additions, corned beef and baguette. The uru is roasted whole over a fire, peeled and served in chunks from which you break a piece of your liking with your fingers. Taro is boiled, with the coconut milk poured over everything on the plate. By the way, there are various kinds of coconut milk, none of which bear much resemblance to the Thai-style product found canned in American supermarkets. One variety is prepared fresh, tonight by the teenage girls. A fresh coconut is split and grated, the resulting pulp then squeezed through a cheesecloth to yield the product. It is lighter both in consistency and taste from the Thai variety. Another style is fermented for a few days and kept refrigerated, having a slightly tangy taste.

The fish. Where to begin? Prepared every imaginable way from completely raw with a bit of salt and lime juice to being tossed on the fire whole and turned until appropriately charred on both sides. In the case of Oiri, a species of trigger fish, the raw liver is inserted under the charred skin just before cooking is finished, the oily liver melting into the flesh for some extra flavor. Some fish are just tossed into the pot and boiled, others steamed, but in no case are any particular spices inserted into the cooking process.

Perhaps the most peculiar of these dishes is Fafaru. You start with some small fish, even lobster, which you place in a jar with some seawater. You then leave this jar sitting around sealed for four to five days – and did I mention the contents are dead at this time? You then carefully open the container and decant the liquid portion, this being the product (part A) of the process. Only then do you secure a perfectly good parrot fish (Uhu), tuna (Ahe), trevally (Paihere), or any other fish you might have on hand at the time. You then skin the fresh fish, fillet it into bite size morsels and pour part A liberally over the pile of it. Let the two mellow for few hours and…eat. Yes, I have tried it and yes, it does taste just as revolting as it sounds. Mind over matter, however, and if you avoid breathing and concentrate on Elvis crooning Moody Blue in the background you quickly realize that there are worse things in the world. I submit that this dish truly is one of the Kings of the Land of Acquired Tastes.

Overall Tahitian food is uncomplicated with subtle flavors coming wholly from the ingredients themselves rather than added spices or sauces. Provided you like fish it is really very good!

After dinner follows a performance. The young women of the family come out one after another to perform the classic Tahitian hula, complete with wreaths of flowers and colorful, not-too-covering dress. The dance is clearly and deeply part of this culture, yet I still find myself startled by the sensuality of the dance in this setting of family and friends. Clearly this is not Kansas, where a 16-year old girl would probably find herself grounded for a month should her parents see her perform a dance like this! The party goes on in a rather mellow way until about midnight as people drift off, leaving me eventually listening to the surf and the echoes of the mournful voice of Elvis still bouncing inside my head.

Sunday we go to church, where the priest does me the courtesy of saying a few introductory words and a summary of the sermon in English. Once again the generosity and hospitality shines through as after the service I am ushered to the head of the table, taking precedence even over the priest. He sits to my right and speaks very good English. We speak about modern Tahiti and the political troubles brewing in the Polynesian Assembly. After the breakfast preparations commence for an afternoon traditional family lunch/dinner, and I am ushered out the door with Louisa on an errand to do, well, I’m not sure exactly what, but options seem limited so I go along.

See, Louisa and I do not really have a common language. I mean there is a ton of good will and a real desire on my part to learn Tahitian, the intensity of which is only exceeded by Louisa’s determination to have me speaking fluently by the time we get back. Accordingly, she points out every plant on the roadside and loudly repeats the Tahitian name of each twice before moving on to the next plant we flash by in the car. I try to make the most of the opportunity by repeating each name twice, but the situation is utterly hopeless and my head soon swims with a cloud of syllables disconnected from each other; never mind of any particular meaning. My fallback position is the grin-and-nod routine. And grin I do, until it hurts. And eventually all the defenses and the verbal person gives way to a more primal grunting and pointing animal, and we establish some level of communication on this more limited plane.

So I get a tour of Taravao and its environs, the local schools, waterfalls, picnic spots, neighbors and relatives houses until I’m anxiously glancing at my watch as the hour draws past midday. We go to Louisa’s house to get some coconuts and mangoes, then to her daughter’s house to get some Taro and some other places for flowers and eventually I am emphatically pointing at my watch that now points at two o’clock. I get my point across and we get back to Teahupoo where Louisa is met with some reproachful looks from all the gathered family. Everyone has arrived, and much of the food is on the table; people had started worrying. I feel both mollified and indignant.

What follows is an eight-hour eating, drinking (not to excess), hanging out session during which I have time to talk to lots of people about, well, everything and anything. Lots of people want to hear about Obama. Some teenagers want to talk about the environment and their worries about Tahiti. Some people tell me about their relatives in LA and Hawaii. I hear about Jean’s older brother who went to Hollywood with the film crew of the Marlon Brando movie Mutiny on the Bounty some forty years ago as a very young man and had a career there. More dancing and eating until around eight o'clock people start drifting off and by 10:00 the place is silent. I sit up for a while listening to the surf on the reef and watching the lightning from a passing storm. Language may be an issue, but these people can certainly make one feel comfortable and at home.

January 31st – Samedi – Teahupoo

2009-02-17T23:49:00.018-05:00

I am hanging on for dear life. My hands squeeze a wooden handle at the back of the very forward cockpit of a Potimarara, a boat built for harpooning Mahi Mahi (dolphin fish). The boat is some 24 feet in length, and equipped with a deep-V bottom and a 200hp Yanmar inboard/outboard diesel. It is leaping off a six foot wave to catch the next one. Water sprays outward in an impressive fan, but the boat has proven remarkably dry inside so far. Driving the boat in the peculiar stand-up steering well at the bow of the boat is Eric, a very deeply tanned muscular fellow looking very much the part of a Mahi-harpooning Tahitian boat captain. I have yet to really understand what Mahi Mahi harpooning really means, in practice, but by the whistle of the turbocharged engine growing more urgent and the boat positively jumping forward in hard acceleration, I have a feeling I’ll soon find out.

Some two hours earlier, around six o’clock, I boarded the boat at the local marina where the fisherman’s co-op has an ice-making plant and fueling station. Eric’s Potimarara is basically an open boat with the engine compartment aft and a large built-in ice box midships. The steering station is all the way forward, with a throttle next to the well and an eight-foot long fiberglass harpoon mounted on brackets on the forward deck. Steering takes place using an athwartships (left-right) lever instead of a wheel. Brilliant orange and yellow in color, the boat is in a good shape and very clean. Billabong surfing stickers adorn the sides and some other surfaces, overall the impression is of a hard used but well cared-for and loved tough piece of sea-going equipment.

After taking in some 60 gallons of diesel and four large sacks of ice stowed in the icebox, we proceeded down the channel inside the reef toward Eric’s house to drop off his wife. They live past Teahupoo in an area of Tahiti Iti with no road access. Some twenty homes dot the shoreline, connected to schools, shopping, etc by boats only. This looks like a very, very nice place to live. The mountains begin pretty much on the back stairs of the houses, the front yard is the lagoon behind the reef and the white picket fence is the surf beating on the reef some 200 meters distant.

We arrive at Eric’s house and dock by the gazebo at the head of his long, narrow dock. His son helps me hold the boat as Eric walks to the house with the shopping bags. The boy is some 8-9 years old, and we entertain ourselves wordlessly by showing each other knots we know; it appears that the bowline knot is pretty universally known. Eventually Eric re-appears and we dash off making well over 20 knots through the channel, coral boulders flashing by on both sides. A bit further we round the reef and stop. It is time for the prayer and over the low purr of the diesel I hear Eric say some quiet words. And then we are out of the pass and head toward the open, brilliant blue South Pacific Ocean.

Eric’s number one asset for fishing, his fish-finder as it were, are the seabirds. He follows the birds closely, occasionally stopping the boat and scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars. We proceed this way at a leisurely pace for about three quarters of an hour, until he sees something promising. “Mahi Mahi” he exclaims and points at a group of birds maybe a half-mile away – and we’re off!

And so I find myself hanging on as we quickly approach the group of birds. When we get close he slows the boat down some and seems to be intently scanning the water. Apparently he spots something as the throttle opens again and we careen forward amidst the waves, banking hard from left to right and back again. Eventually looking forward I get a glance of the fish he is following with the boat. The bright yellow pectoral fins of the Mahi stand out against the deep blue of the ocean, and the big dorsal fin ripples the surface as the fish gracefully speeds just below the surface. At this point I sense that things are about to get busy, and so move back in the boat to avoid accidentally receiving a mouthful of the back end of the long harpoon. Bracing myself between the icebox and the side of the boat, I manage to get out the camera and proceed to try to get some photos of the chase.

A few more turns, a few more decelerations and rapid take-offs, and Eric’s hand goes to the harpoon. He steers with his left hand; works the throttle with the harpoon in his right hand and then… the throw is so quick I simply miss it. A thick nylon monofilament attached to the harpoon trails over the side, and he stops the boat. It seems so improbable that one could possibly hit a fish so quick with that thing, the boat bouncing in the waves and all, that I don’t immediately comprehend that there indeed is a fish at the pointy end of the harpoon. It is only when Eric leaps from the cockpit, motions toward the gaff at the back of the boat and starts heaving on the line that I get it. I pass the gaff to him and proceed to take in the events through the viewfinder of my camera. The view that unfolds is simply amazing. The fish puts up a fight, but once the gaff is in the fight is over. Eric hoists the fish up and I get a simply astonishing view of the big brilliant yellow fish. Once on deck, the fish goes into the reflexive escape swimming motion that looks more like a very rapid tremor than anything else. Eric reaches down and with a quick motion of his knife severs the artery leading to the gills. The fish stops, relaxes, and it is over.

Eric hoists it over the side and makes one incision in the belly of the fish. Through the gill operculum he reaches two fingers around the gills and twists them out along with some parts of the innards. Holding the fish through the operculum, he then thrusts a hand in the belly and neatly pulls out the rest of the organs and tosses them in to the boat. A couple of rinses and he lifts the fish into the icebox, spreading ice over it. He then sorts through the innards, keeping the liver and the two intact small fish in its stomach. A few buckets of seawater over the deck and the boat is ready for the next one. I am looking on, somewhat stunned at the speed and efficiency of the whole operation. I don’t know why I’m surprised, this is his profession after all, but the consummate skill that went into this performance is very impressive. We pause for a drink, and then it is off to find the next one.

Except there is no next one. The sun rises higher in the sky and Eric is clearly growing a bit frustrated. We cruise, stop, he scans the horizon. An hour, two pass like this, at times he curses “Aita manu”, no birds. And there aren’t any birds. Or there are some, a distant fairy tern, a few brown boobies and shearwaters, but not the flock he is looking for and not in the combination he is looking for. I later quiz him for what exactly does he look, but the language barrier allows me only to understand he’s looking for a combination of a white bird and a black bird.

One o’clock, and we are still at it, when he sees something promising. After the leisurely cruising pace he opens up the throttle and we take off, the turbocharged engine whistling at the back. He points to the horizon, explaining “Bonitiere”. Indeed I see another boat in the distance, our paths converging on a particularly large flock of birds. All stops come off and we bounce through the waves at what must be around 28 knots. The bonitiere beats us by a little; some 32 feet long and resembling a 1960’s east coast cabin cruisers, it still seems pretty fast. With several lines trolling behind, there appear to be about five people on board working the back deck.

We slow down on a parallel track and both follow a very large feeding flock of birds. Boobies, noddies, terns, shearwaters and petrels are all present in the mixed flock, each engaged in their own peculiar feeding behaviors. The boobies dive spectacularly head-long into the water, first gathering altitude, then folding their wings all the way back and plunging into the sea like a sliver of an arrow. The shearwaters plunge in with much less grace, while the terns dip down to pick at the surface while in flight.

Every so often there is a very concentrated spot of bird activity, the water is positively beaten into a froth by them. It is for these spots that both the bonitiere and we race, occasionally in pretty competitive fashion in close quarters. Eventually we end further apart and Eric whips the boat to one of these spots. We scare the birds out of the water, arriving almost on the top of them. Eric slams the boat into reverse and motions in the water. I don’t understand what he is saying, but there is this floating branch about 8 feet in length in the water and it seems like he wants me to grab it. So I do, and lift it in the boat while he leaps out of the cockpit and races to the back of the boat. Now he is peering behind the boat, then turns and, speaking rapidly, motions me to go to the controls and drive the boat slowly forward. At this point I am truly at a loss, but clearly want to help and so hop into the cockpit.

It is at that moment I learn where his muscles come from. The steering lever requires significant effort to move and it takes me a couple of moments to get the hang of the feel of the boat. I do manage, though, all the while looking at what Eric is planning to do with his damn stick. Except he isn’t paying the stick any attention at all, instead he has in his hand one of the six or so bamboo fishing rods from the back of the boat. The rod, about 7 feet in length, has about 6 feet of nylon monofilament line and a lure, and he is making the lure swim side to side behind the boat his gaze intently on the water. And then he jerks the rod back and flying through the air is a two-foot long skipjack tuna that lands in the boat with a resounding thud. He jerks the rod back and the lure flies out of the fish and back into the water. Maybe 15 seconds later another comes flying into the boat. And another. And another! And now I can see them, the fish darting behind the boat silhouetted against the curtain of bubbles thrown by our propeller.

There is a lull in the rain of fish. Eric quickly grabs another rod and proceeds to land a couple more. Then another rod and another couple of fish. On deck the dying skipjack go into the same escape swimming tremor, flapping and vibrating furiously, the deck covering with bloody froth as they bash themselves against the hard fiberglass. Eric pulls on a pair of wetsuit booties to protect his ankles from the beating, convulsing fish. And then, as quickly as it started, it is over. The feeding frenzy on the small fish that were trying to find refuge by our boat is done and the skipjack depart. There are well over a dozen skipjack between 20 and 30 inches in length on the deck, blood spattered everywhere and one by one the fish fall quiet. Eric catches his breath, and the proceeds to clean the fish with the same astonishing speed as the Mahi Mahi; a quick cut to the belly, two fingers around the gills, a twist, another hand in the belly, a pull and the fish is gutted and ready for the ice box. He hands me the fish, I stack them in the box, done. He then proceeds to clean the boat thoroughly, and together we finish the task in some ten minutes.

And with that, the catching is over. We continue tracking a large flock of birds for a while, but the birds themselves are looking. Gliding along the surface, there is an occasional fracas, but nothing much is happening and the birds keep moving further offshore. At around 1530 Eric turns the boat around and proceeds toward Tahiti Iti, now distant in the horizon. An hour and 20 minutes of cruising at about 20 knots gets us close to home. Near the reef we see another group of birds and detour to investigate. We get there, but to Eric’s dismay driving the small fish to the surface is not tuna but dolphins. We see them below us darting back and forth, occasionally breaking the surface for a breath. With this sight he quickly turns the boat toward the pass and home.

We arrive at the dock around five in the afternoon. Estellio is there to greet us with a couple of beers. The next day there is surf in the forecast, and Eric has some surfers chartering him and the boat for a day at the pass. With a good Tahitian handshake I say mauruuru, thanks, and head home my head still spinning from it all.

January 30th - Vendredi – Teahupoo

2009-02-14T06:33:00.035-05:00

So here is the scene. I’m writing this from the verandah of the parish house of the Teahupoo’s St. Benoit catholic church, where I will be staying for the next six days. What you have to picture is a building of which 1/3 forms a large open space that opens directly to the sea. And I do mean directly, as there is but a ten-foot strip of gravelly sand between the balustrade and the water. Some half-mile distant is the reef, with the famous Teahupoo surf break about a mile away to the left. Behind the house and less than half a mile away start the deep eroded slopes of the ancient volcano that formed this island, now covered in the exuberant
lush greens of the Tahitian landscape. To say this place is gorgeous seems inadequate.

I just came back from the first outing, this with Jean Sulpis who is a local spear fisherman. Actually he is not making his living from spear fishing, but like many people around town he puts a lot of the food on the table by his spear gun. And did I mention his is good at it?

I had never really seen spear fishing first hand, and the term “fishing” here seems a misnomer. It really is hunting more than anything else, creeping on the bottom, using ledges and coral boulders for camouflage, waiting for the fish to come within reach. While holding your breath, of course… We got up at 0430 (in the dark), had a bite to eat and then paddled the va’a (outrigger canoe) to the reef cut. I ask Jean which way we are headed and he responds by gesturing primarily upward. This is followed by a brief stop during which he prays. I assume this is for a good catch, but combined by the previous gesturing and getting a good look at the surf on the Teahupoo pass, I increasingly dread it is simply for a safe return.

We slip into the water as the rising sun is casting its first rays over the mountains of Tahiti Iti. Jean immediately begins fishing, approaching the reef break from the shallow water to peek over the edge. He lies on the bottom motionless, at times using his hand to creep forward - the spear gun pointing forward and at the ready. I am so focused on him that I completely fail to see the fish his first shot hits – an Uhu, or parrotfish some 30cm in length. He kills the fish at the surface by a quick stab of the tip of the spear just behind the eye to the brain. He then threads the fish on a stout nylon line around his waist, and proceeds to go after the next one. Fish are scarce this morning apparently, and, before long, we have swum some distance from the anchored canoe. Jean motions me to go fetch it and tow it behind, emphasizing the motions with “la pirogue, la pirogue” (the canoe, the canoe). I sprint back, happy to be of some use.

At this point Jean abandons the reef edge and starts fishing almost in the surf. I guess I should mention something about the surf to those who, like me, know next to nothing about surfing. See, this is quite possibly the most famous surfing spot in the world right now. It is hard to appreciate it this early morning when the sea seems pretty placid. There is something about the reef near the pass, gently curving to an almost South-North orientation, that forms an almighty wave when the long swell from the distant Southern Ocean storms roll in. After all, there is naught but water between us and Antarctica (all right, some small islands I’ll be visiting later…) so the swell can travel long distances without disturbance. The Teahupoo wave, at its highest reaches well over 7-8 m I’m told, and is one of the places where the top surfers in the world gather every May to establish the rightful pecking order of surfing stardom.

Back to fishing, however! This monster wave leaves its mark underwater as well, flattening pretty much all growth forms of coral toward the reef crest, and scouring deep drainage channels into the reef matrix, running perpendicular to the reef crest toward deep water. It is these sheer-walled channels some one to two meters in depth that Jean is now fishing. Alas, he is doing it so close to the reef crest that even the present gentle 1 to 2 meter swell occasionally breaks right over him. I remain further seaward in deeper water with the canoe in tow, visions of the canoe catching a wave and being deposited in bits over the reef crest – with yours truly in tow – helping to enforce a respectful distance.

Jean’s fish count is now up to about 7 or 8, and we have swum a good mile down the reef. He comes to the canoe; we pile in and start paddling further south, toward the next pass and into the building wind and waves. I am proud to report that my watery education that commenced at an early age in rowing boats of the Savo-district in Finland comes handy, and I can produce a controlled movement forward in the canoe all by myself as Jean bails. I can only assume this is how he has always done things, but the canoe begins to feel more like those James Bond two-seater micro-subs, albeit man-powered, than a proper Archimedean vessel of conveyance. I paddle, he bails and we inch along the reef finally reaching the next pass and scoot in behind the reef. He makes some noises of relief and, with an international gesture, mops his brow with his forearm. I’m sensing he’s perhaps trying to impress me just a bit and this might not be his average day’s fishing journey.

He fishes the edge of the pass, approaching the very abrupt fall-off of the reef from about 2 meters depth to goodness knows how deep. I’ve never been a particularly good free-diver as a restricted eustachian tube means I can’t equalize the pressure in my ear fast enough to make it very deep. Jean, however, is truly impressive. He gracefully glides down and vanishes into the blue for almost two minutes at a time. He is from Ua Pou in the Marquesas Islands, and says over there they fish even deeper.

Eventually the sun gets high enough to put an end to his efforts – the height of day is not good for fishing. This time we are running with the wind in the protection of the reef and the paddle back to the house is a positive joy. We get back around 11:00 and sit down for a Tahitian breakfast of papaya (with some lime), avocado, baguette, coffee and fried fish. Not a bad start for the day!

January 23

2009-02-14T06:20:00.003-05:00

Amidst the cruise preparation onboard and the general shipboard existence that can be all-consuming, I have managed to get a couple of things done for the project. The big one: itinerary is now set, and the main travel tickets purchased. So in broad strokes, this is how my calendar will look:

January 28-Feb 5: 1st stop Teahupoo on the south shore of Tahiti Iti.

February 5: Back on the ship to repair broken gyrocompass.

February 6: Fight to Rangiroa.

February 14: Flight from Rangiroa to Manihi

February 19: Flight from Manihi to Papeete

February 20: Flight from Papeete to Tubuai

February 27: Flight from Tubuai to Papeete

March 28: Flight from Papeete to Nuku Hiva

March 14: Flight from Nuku Hiva to Papeete

Within each stop there will be some forms of boat travel, within the atolls and hopefully in the Marquesas between the islands as well. I must say that holding this piece of paper (the ticket and itinerary from Air Tahiti) has helped to translate the trip from a future plan to impending reality. One short overnight cruise around Moorea ahead and then…

So what is this place anyway?

2009-01-05T20:12:00.006-05:00

OK, the plan is this. For the next three weeks I will be on board the Robert C. Seamans, involved in a couple of short collaborative programs we are doing here this year – more about those later. On or about January 27, I’ll leave the ship and start the fisheries project in earnest, but I thought I would use these first three weeks writing about topics that will give you a taste of what this place is about.

A Tahitian friend, Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutapu, whom I met on my first trip here, is helping me in my planning and practical arrangements in a very substantial way. He is a Ph.D. oceanographer as well, and has divided his time in the past four years between academia and politics – he is a professor at the University of French Polynesia and has served multiple times as the Minister of fisheries and marine resources. But beyond that he is an avid fisherman himself, and indeed a big part of the inspiration for my project here.

This much I know about my coming itinerary: I will visit five different islands in five different parts of this archipelago. Right, but perhaps I should acquaint you with the basics of the geography of these islands before going any further.

There are some nice reproductions of the map of French Polynesia overlaid with that of Europe. They cover roughly the same area, which gives you some idea how big this place really is in terms of distances (landmass, though, adds up to less than one Delaware). It consists of five major groups: the Marqueasas, the Tuamotus, the Gambier Islands, the Austral Islands and the Society Islands. The Society Islands further fall into the Windward and the Leeward groups, Tahiti and Moorea being the major Windward Islands.

What makes all these islands collectively the French Polynesia is an accident of the history of European colonial expansion. Let's just say that when the dust settled, France was left with lots of little islands while the Brits took the big places. Take out the word French, and you are left wondering what exactly is the Polynesia part about. It is a term that really reflects the struggle of the early European explorers from Cook on to understand the connections they perceived between the widely spaced islands in the western and central Pacific.

Indeed the connections are many among these islands. They were populated by the Polynesian Migration, a movement of people that started from around New Guinea and Indonesia some 3,000 years ago and reached the central Pacific islands sometime before 500 AD. The languages spoken are of the same language group, their mythologies are similar, as are early building methods. For all the similarities, though, there are some significant differences as well. I think it might be useful to think of the term Polynesian in the way one thinks of the term European – sharing many things certainly, but you wouldn’t want to suggest to a Frenchman that they are really just the same deal as Italians.

So there it is. A Tahitian and a Paumotu (someone from the Tuamotus) speak languages that are not readily mutually intelligible and think about the world in slightly different ways. And so I will now start using the word Polynesian a bit less and instead will refer to the islands themselves. And given that I am right now in Tahiti, I’ll start with mostly talking about Tahiti and the Tahitians.

Next up, some observations about Papeete.

So it begins

2009-01-03T18:51:00.009-05:00

Here’s something worse than a mere blank page. A blank blog. And very little idea of where to start the narrative. I’m writing this sitting in a plane over the snowy Midwest, having just started a journey that I hope will take me to far corners of the distant archipelago of French Polynesia. Relating how that journey goes is what this blog is all about.

I do have a more specific mission for these travels than just sight seeing. Through the generous support of a pretty remarkable foundation, I’m setting out to take a look at the relationship between the people of the islands and the sea. Specifically how, and to what extent, they still extract a living from the ocean.

My motivation to do this? I have been lucky enough to be able to visit some of these islands in the past five years, on board the Sea Education Association (SEA) sailing research vessel Robert C. Seamans. Approaching the islands as we do after a passage of some three thousand miles of naught but blue water, they present a startling contrast to the surrounding tropical ocean. Contrast in both the abundance and diversity of life familiar to everybody who has dived or snorkeled on a coral reef. The surrounding ocean, though, is among the least productive waters in the world – described by some as an ocean desert.

Nowhere else in the world I’ve visited have I experienced such a palpable sense of remoteness than on a Pacific ocean atoll island. On the big ones the lagoon that forms the center of the island is big enough to visually project just a horizon – the other side somewhere beyond it. So you realize that you are essentially standing on this pile of coral rock and sand with some palm trees and low shrubs offering a vivid green contrast to all the hues of blues from the sea and the sky.

It is beautiful, but you quickly realize just how hostile of a place it is all the same. With the high points maybe 8 feet above water, there isn’t much of a fresh water table. With all the sand, the soil is not really suited for agriculture. So you quickly realize that the people of these islands really had to understand how to extract a living out of the sea. Because in the final analysis that is all there is.

Today many of these islands are starting to sprout a tourist economy and the realities of life have changed rapidly in the past 50 or so years. All of these islands suffered horrible losses from disease in the wake of the contact with Europeans. The population today is a fraction of what it was when Wallis, Cook and Bougainville first visited Tahiti in 1767 and 1768. Today, the outer islands are still slowly emptying as young people seek the opportunities that Papeete offers. My mission for the next three months is to visit a few of these islands, talk to the fishermen and try to document what of the traditional fishing techniques that are still around.

So much for the introduction. During the next three months I’ll be writing more about the islands themselves, their culture, the politics, the fishing and natural history - essentially anything interesting I can get my hands on. I hope you tag along!