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.
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.
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