We arrived in Moorea after a short sail from Papeete and turned Llyr into Cook’s Bay, the first anchorage on the northern coast. We dropped anchor but were unable to get it set. A couple of other boats we know radioed to say they were headed over to the next bay where a cook out was to take place that night, so we gave up on getting a hold and headed further west. A brief motor brought us to Opunohu Bay where we could see most boats anchored at the mouth of the bay, just inside the fringing reef.The setting was beautiful. The jagged peaks of Mount Rotui loom over the bay.
Right onshore next to the anchorage, a day camp for local kids meant that each day, dozens of small sailing boats zoomed around Llyr, filled with happy kids, having fun tacking alongside us and shouting out their greetings.
The beauty and fun above water, however, was not to be matched below.
Nutrient Indicator Algae
We snorkeled the nearby reefs and found that one side of the pass was virtually dead, while the other showed only some small coral growth in shallow waters, although we did find a pretty cool wreck to explore. The situation with the reefs was grim. We needed answers as to what was going on and we were to find some of them on one of the fieldtrips we took on the island.
Three fieldtrips:
A) CRIOBE, the French acronym for The Insular Research Center and Environment Observatory field station.
At the head of Opunohu Bay, a paved road winds up the central valley of the island through pastureland. Right at its base lies this field station which welcomes French and international researchers. We stopped by briefly and were invited to attend a lecture where Canadian researchers were presenting on their studies of Pacific Northwest octopus! Chuck, meanwhile, had met up with the center director and had a brief exchange with him, which resulted in all of us returning the following week to learn about their work on FP reefs and tour the facility.
We met with biologist and center director, Dr. Yannick Chancerelle and Gilles Siu, a scientific diver and computer and math specialist. Here are some of the things we learned.
CRIOBE has been monitoring reefs in Moorea since 1971. Multiple factors led to the rubbly, dead reefs we had been seeing, the main one being a 2006 outbreak of Acanthaster (Crown of Thorns starfish) in the Society Islands, followed by a cyclone in 2010 which removed a lot of reef structure. As a result of these blows, according to Dr. the reef went from 40% coverage (which he indicated was good) to 0%. Current recovery is estimated to be about 5% on outer reefs (outer reefs fare better since they are more protected from inshore nutrient in the water). He indicated that it could take 10-15 years for recovery from such an assault. Other forces which slow recovery and that impact inshore reefs were listed as sewage, erosion from construction, agricultural run-of, and human contact with reefs.
While he didn’t initially include fishing as a vector impacting the reefs, at other points he related how overfishing is placing enormous pressure on the reefs. He reported that, unfortunately, there is no association of fishermen or any kind of collective organization among fishers, therefore there are no spokespeople from the local fishing community who can help provide oversight in marine protected areas.
Yannick introduced us to Gilles, a young Tahitian computer specialist who had recently secured a long-term contract with CRIOBE. Gilles was hired to set up live probes to measure oceanic variables and makes CRIOBE’s database available online. This led to learning fish counting and he is now employed by CRIOBE to take on fish surveys in several sites around the Pacific Ocean in addition to managing probes and the database. He had studied computers in France and had returned to Tahiti in the hopes of finding work. He reported that there aren’t many good job options for Polynesians with higher education and most of them remain abroad. He considered himself fortunate to find this work with CRIOBE and to be able to remain in Tahiti. (At the end of our meeting, he shared with us his deep-water photography: Spectacular images of creatures taken as deep as 100m!) He and Yannick showed us some of their data collection on a variety of reef measurements gathered from remote sensing buoys and grid surveys (among remote sensing measurements they were looking at temp, pH, etc). Interestingly, among there findings was some indication of warming waters (.33 degrees celcius in the last ten years.) They did not appear to find this significant and reported it was too short term for any conclusions to be drawn. In addition, the told us that their pH measurements – which would have interested us somewhat – were useless since the monitor was not sensitive enough and kept breaking down all the time.
We appreciated their taking the time to tour us around the facility and talk about their work. They seemed pretty enthusiastic about the idea of using Llyr for access to other island groups, but the timing was not right. Most of all, it gave Llyr’s crew a lot of food for thought about the nature of scientific research in the context of climate change, and about the problems of conservation where scientific knowledge and local knowledge have no common platform.
B) The Agricultural School (Lycée Agricole d’Opunohu (Opunohu Agricultural School), located 4 km further up the road from CRIOBE
The school system in FP is the French system. Among the islands, we’ve learned that children receive their primary education locally, but if they are to continue on, they usually have to leave home and board somewhere more centralized so that they can pursue further schooling. (more on this educational crisis in the Pacific later!)
The Lycee is FP’s high school for students interested in agriculture and draws students from across FP. It serves about 200 kids, ages14-18, roughly. Kids learn such skills as crop farming, horticulture, livestock farming, landscape design, and ways to create value-added products. We enjoyed some incredible ice cream made at the school using their own fruits and purchased a selection of exquisite jams, with flavors like nothing we’d tried before.
School was not in session, but during vacation periods the facility serves as a tourism destination, run by local staff, who also keep up with all the farming in the absence of the student farmers! Several (confusing) trails meander through the property where you can learn, with the assistance of a guidebook, about the various crops they grow and and how they can be used.
Given what we’ve seen and learned about farming and food in the Marquesas and Tuamotus, it was an interesting place to visit.
We made this visit with a trio of teens from another boat, and as we left the school, our boys joined them to hike further up the road to the Belvedere Lookout. They panoramic view of the valley and the two bays on either side of Mount Rotui looked dramatic in their photos.
The Hilton Resort
Our third fieldtrip took us over to the Hilton Resort! There, we attended a talk by Dr. Michael Poole on the dolphins and whales in French Polynesian waters. Michael Poole is a friend of Pamela and Alain of GEMM whom we met back in Rangiroa. Most of the attendees were cruisers (if I haven’t mentioned this elsewhere, this refers to people living on boats!) as the word about the talk had spread through the anchorage and one of the sailors had actually gone to graduate school with him; however, there were a couple of honeymoon couples present as well, those constituting the more typical audience at these weekly talks. Hilton, as part of their “Green and Socially Responsible” efforts, pays Dr. Poole to make these weekly presentations to their guests on marine mammals. We learned a lot of very interesting facts, including confirmation that what we saw during our sail along Nuku Hiva’s east coast, were indeed hundreds of rare, protected melon-headed whales! Overall, however, many of us were somewhat dismayed by a sense of greenwashing of the difficult issues facing marine environments. Clearly, this could be considered a limitation of the setting: Probably not too many honeymooners in Paradise want to hear gloom and doom about the oceans! A few of us yachties stirred things up with challenging questions and the talk went on a lot longer than typical, or so Dr. Poole indicated. Afterward, the conversations among Llyr’s crew focused on greenwashing and the conundrums of public outreach, as well as the challenges of obtaining financial support for conservation work while in the lion’s den.