February 28 – Jeudi – Tupuai

“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

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 20 – Vendredi – Papeete

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!