Oceania

Kaoha nui from 5 days south of Nuku Hiva

When I boarded Bobby C for the second time at the start of this voyage, it felt like returning to an old friend’s home. Overlayed on this ship are endless memories from my student trip in 2021. On the starboard gunnel Gene still sits buried under the small boat, loaded with laundry supplies and overflow fishing gear. She comes with a new plywood rudder that ties on with line (I left the rudder in a bad state last time I sailed Gene in Palmyra…sorry Gene…shoutout Camille and Regina), but looks otherwise unchanged. My bunk in the foc’sle, where I spooked every crewmember sleeping with my eyes open, belongs to a student now. My new bunk in Shellback Alley is cozy and a safe place to sneak passing conversations with the other TAs between watches.

Even though I’m a stranger to these waters, they feel familiar. My grandpa sailed these same pathways in Hokule’a only 40 years ago, in the early stages of the Pacific voyaging renaissance. With the early crew on the Voyage of Rediscovery, he would have passed through many of these ports, following the same constellations I watch now. As we head southwest from Nuku Hiva to Mangareva, the Southern Cross rises off our starboard beam, and Hokulea (Arcturus) sets off our port, and I imagine wayfinding with nothing but these celestial markers. Centuries ago, my ancestors traversed these paths as trade routes, sailing thousands of miles to exchange stories, crafts, or news and marking latitude and longitude with nothing but the stars. These are deep and stories waters, rich with the tales of countless generations of kupuna who passed like birds from land to sea. Navigators, the first oceanographers, have been well acquainted with the nuances of this place for millennia. Generational memory, passed down to people like Papa Mau, or Nainoa Thompson, holds the longest historical oceanographic dataset. As we sample water, dissect fish, and count birds, I am reminded of how deeply studied this sea of islands is. Often, I try to gauge with my senses all that we measure with instruments. I look for the rich forest green of high chlorophyll, the glimmering bioluminescence of an elevated deep scattering layer, the shifting winds and clear skies of an island’s lee.

At each port, I am reminded of how connected Oceania is. The outrigger canoes filling lawns are the first tell; the kids on boogey boards expertly catching breaks are the second. Each stop also brings a sense of urgency as I can’t help but picture the devastation 1 meter of sea level rise will bring. Roads in Nuku Hiva, like roads in Hawaii, trace the coast line, mere feet above the water level. Coastal homes start where the ever shrinking beach ends. How many of our homes will be inundated? How many roads flooded or collapsed? Our future will be full of challenges, but I believe in our ability to find solutions, and I hope our answers span from the biggest cities to the smallest islets of Oceania.