Flip-flopping in the Natural World of Vava´u
Setting sail from the Ha´apai, the middle island group in Tonga, my head and heart were very troubled by the poor state of the marine life I had seen there by comparison with my memory of my previous visit six years ago. So great was the contrast between these two experiences, that part of me doubted whether my memory was correct (or perhaps doubted my sanity) as we arrived in Vava´u, the tightly-knit cluster of islands fourteen hours sail to the north, of which I also had a vivid recollection. Unfortunately it was my sanity that proved sound and my doubts that proved shaky...
Reefs that I had very specific and clear memories of diving on six years ago were most definitely showing, at my estimate, only about 40-60% of the live coral that they had, if that. I found shoals of small reef fish still around, but found it difficult to see what food chain they were part of.
Whilst these fish most certainly are wonderful in themselves, they do not represent an independent ecosytem. There was a very notable lack of top predators, meaning almost no sharks. As well as this, different species of algae were flourishing rather a lot more than I suspected they should be around healthy coral reef ecosystems
(although some of them were rather gorgeous in themselves. This one struck me as being reminiscent of 1970´s knitting projects).
All in all, there seemed to be missing links without which things weren´t prospering or offering me any hope that prosperity could be easily renewed.
This was when I had the great experience of chatting with a member of VEPA, the Vava´u Environmental Protect Association (https://vavauenvironment.org). A independent collaboration between western and Tongan forces, VEPA are doing excellent work on many fronts, with a keen eye toward keeping the focus on preserving Tonga for Tongans, meaning not for rich western tourists to take a photo of and then go home, burning up the planet on an aeroplane in the process, but for the benefit of ordinary Tongans´ sustainable, healthy and happy lives. This involves lots of community work, collaborating with locals in information gathering exercises which can (and do) lead to the implementation of, for instance, marine reserve areas, of which I began to spot quite a few, designated by flags, buoys and other floating markers.
The VEPA marine scientist I spoke to had spent a lot more time under the water hereabouts than me, to put it mildly. In fact, she cited herself as the source of baseline studies against which current reef health is being measured, so she seemed as qualified as anyone I could meet to answer my questions about local reef health. Her response covered almost every stress to coral reefs that I had ever heard of: bleaching events (due to sea temperature rise, coral polyps expel the symbiotic photosynthesising micro-organisms that nourish them and give them their colour, leaving the coral white and dead), physical damage from cyclones, over-fishing, land run-off, crown of thorns starfish gobbling up live corals at an alarming rate...
Still willing to support the I´m insane/my memory doesn´t work theory, I asked if there were some reefs that were still flourishing, seeking some comparison, some affirmation that, yes, that´s what they used to look like, it wasn´t a dream. A few recently declared marine reserves were pointed out to me on a nautical chart, and we duly hoisted sail and went of keenly in search. Here, I think, lay the final blow: not even here, in these expert-recommended spots was there anything that inspired even a small measure of the awe I felt six years ago on pretty much every reefs I swam on. These reefs looks pretty much the same as every other I had already swum on in Tonga this season.
Call it paranoia, but I then started to be aware that whilst the humpback whales (who do not feed at all and therefore occupy no large place in the food chain) seemed to be the one species whose numbers were not depleted, but they were not singing! I had such incredible memories of whalesong coming through the hull of the boat day and night on my previous visit, of whalesong every time I put my ear beneath the water´s surface, of so much whalesong that at times one would want it to be quieter. My rational brain tried to figure this out: I had visited later in the season before, maybe they only sing later? (This proved wrong, they never sang much, although I did faintly hear them several times.) Was there less for the whales to communicate because the danger presented by large sharks predating their young calves had dropped dramatically by the fall-off in shark numbers? (Possibly there is some mileage in this.) Overall, I could not shift a dark cloud of tragedy and loss which the lack of whalesong seemed to signify to the woollier part of my soul.
I´ve seen dead reefs before. For instance, I have visited the same reefs on successive years with a cyclone in between and witnessed the catastrophic damage. This, however, I could rationalise and therefore put away as less important. The complex crises which are causing the death of Tongan reefs I cannot put away, I feel very deeplydisturbed by them. The ´canary in a mine´ analogy, which has been used many times to illustrate that the much publicised ´death of the Great Barrier Reef´ is a mere indicator of the planetary environmental collapse that is on its way, starts to feel very spooky. The alarming sense of my closeness to this decay has caused me to flip-flop between ´it´s happening before my eyes!!´ and ´no it can´t be, that´s impossibly bad!!´, but... are we programmed for optimism? It´s amazing what we can become used to. After weeks in Vava´u, we started to find the best reefs, the little places where life was still thriving and, by degrees, we gravitated there (of course!). On reflection, I can see that as I fill my panorama with the remaining good stuff, the other stuff, the upsetting reality, loses its hold on me, I start to feel less about it.
And thus....?
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