We arrived at Nguna Island early in the afternoon. Chris, the Peace Corps worker and resident marine biologist, called us on the VHF radio and welcomed us to the area. He also gave us instructions on where to anchor so we wouldn't disturb the reef and sea life in the protected area. Then, he invited us ashore to visit the small lab and the village of Tiki. Chris is from Florida. He's in his early twenties and he's a ball of fire. He has lots of energy and puts it to very good use helping the vilagers and residents of the two islands that make up the Reserve. You can tell he is highly respected by them.
The lab was an interesting place where Chris does research on the giant clams in the Reserve, a turtle tagging program and cultivates trochus shells. The latter will eventually provide an income for the villagers as the shells are used to make jewelry. The brown sign in the middle of the picture above says, "Tabu, Tabu, Tabu, Yu no mas kam insaed". This is Bislamic (or pidgin) English for "It is forbidden to come inside".
This photo shows the turtle tagging process. A tag is clamped on to the turtle's fin and it's number is then recorded for later sightings. This particular turtle was named Keenan after our grandson, Keenan. He was a beautiful endangered Green turtle. We also tagged two Hawksbill turtles on the rare and endangered list. One was named Kendall, after our granddaughter, and the other named Mia, after Suzy's mother. These turtles have been observed to reappear in places like Australia and Papua New Guinea, quite a distance from Vanuatu. Like the turtles in the movie "Finding Nemo", they will follow the EAC (East Australian Current) to these far away spots. Nicholas, Chris's right hand man is holding Keenan during the process. I was holding his fin out so the tag could be punched into cartilage. After this picture was taken, I was handed Keenan to set free on the water's edge. He took off in a burst of power once in the water!
I did a night dive with Chris and Nicholas in the Reserve area off of Nguna to look for more turtles to tag. The area is a fantastic reef with numerous reef fish, beautiful coral and giant clams. Al, from Different Worlds, took the underwater photos used on this page during his Vanuatu dives. They show the beauty found in these special places.
There were many varieties of starfish along the reefs. Probably the most common were the blue starfish. The colors underwater at night, illuminated by camera flash or underwater light, brought out brilliant colors like those seen in the pictures above.
We also saw a number of different types of rays. This one was in the sand well camouflaged prior to getting its picture taken. The Marine Reserve project is in place to protect the reefs and use them in a wise way so they might provide income to the villagers while preserving the existence of the reef itself. Its a very worthy project. If you'd like to see more on the Nguna-Pele Marine Reserve project, just click here.
Chris gave us a tour of the village of Tiki along with a hike to the tree house they had built for the children of the village. He also invited us to church services where we heard the beautiful harmonizing voices of the ni-Vanuatuans. He also escorted us on a trip over to Pele Island where we went to search for a dugong,which looks a bit like a manatee with a pig's snout and a whale's tail. One of the native men on Pele is a dugong caller (kind of analogous to a horse whisperer). But, we arrived at the wrong time for the tides and he wasn't able to help us. But, it was an interesting experience. Chris also took us to a women's home where she was preparing the national dish of Vanuatu, laplap. It has a taste a bit like custard. It was warm right out of the fire!
We did a lot of fun things at Nguna and Pele Islands. We hated to leave. But, it was getting close to mid September and we needed to think about time we wanted to spend in New Caledonia. It was a difficult decision whether we would sail further north in Vanuatu and visit Espiritu Santo, Epi Pentecost and Malakula Islands and then beat back south to Efate and New Caledonia, go north and skip New Cal altogether or just go back to Efate now and spend more time in New Cal by leaving earlier. Several of our friends were already in Luganville at Espiritu Santo and they encouraged us to come dive the Coolidge, a fabulous experience. The Coolidge went down in WWII after hitting a mine. It is one of the largest ships you can dive upon (almost as big as the Titanic) anywhere in the world. The dive is between 90 and 150 feet deep, so, its normally a decompression dive. They say doing it at night is incredible. Well, after weighing all our options, we decided to go back to Efate and get that early start to New Caledonia. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and we waited a couple of weeks before we were able to leave Port Vila. However, that same weather system was even worse up north. So, we didn't feel bad about our decision to miss the rest of Vanuatu. We could always come back.
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