Later start to the day today, but our bodies are slow to adjust to Tahiti Time – and let me say how much I love that’s the legitimate name of this time zone. Look it up if you don’t believe me!
Everything went a little more smoothly today – we knew what we were bringing, and the bags that were bringing it. The one exception (and there’s always an exception) was that LATAM had once more shifted our flights to the Atacama, to which we responded by booking entirely new flights that left mid-afternoon as opposed to early evening.
(We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to shift our other tickets, but because LATAM refuses to let us book LATAM+ fares on Premium Economy tickets, we’ll need to call in. And if there something we didn’t have time to do this morning, it’s call an airline)
But I did finally find time to unpack my Nikon and get a few shots:
For Antarctica, I largely used a 24 to 200 mm lens that had a tremendous amount of versatility in terms of its zoom, and its compact size.
But there’s a trade-off – a zoom lens like that doesn’t let in as much light as a prime (non-zoom) lens. So I’ve also brought a 50 mm f1.8 prime lens. (The 50 mm refers to the zoom, and the f1.8 refers to the aperture or the size of the opening – lower is wider.) This lens can take pictures in extremely low light, which should make for better portraits and landscapes.
Enough playing about with cameras for one morning. Coral Gardeners’ joining instructions carefully warned us that they will leave without us at 8:45 am, so we needed to leave plenty of time. This time we’re headed to the north side of the island, roughly halfway between Beach Villa Cook and the ferry terminal.
We got in about 8:30 am, right around the time we were supposed to meet at the Pao Pao Ferry Terminal (not to be confused with the main ferry terminal). Time marched on – 8:35, 8:40, 8:45. This, notionally, is when they were due to depart without us.
We asked around to see if anyone could point us in the direction of the Coral Gardener boat. They seemed to think it was the Corallina boat. We were not convinced.
But a minute after 8:45 am, the Coral Gardener boat rolled in – and within 8 minutes, we had boarded and departed on our “Nursery Xperience” tour. And yes, we did leave without two of the guests. (Each tour departs with a maximum of ten.) As perennially early travellers, this is a tour policy we can get behind.
Busy morning at the terminal today, particularly with Ponant’s Paul Gauguin in port:
The scenery in Cook Bay is just stunning:
We boated over to the Coral Gardeners’ main office, where our guide taught us a little bit about the history of Coral Gardeners and coral in general.
The organization was founded by Titouan Bernicot in 2017 after he realized that the reefs around Moorea were dying out. He and his staff have set up a coral ‘nursery’ in which super-growing, heat-resistant local varieties of coral (currently 15 different species) can be grown from fragments until they are mature enough to be transplanted into the local area.
Thus far more than 166,000 corals have been planted, with enough reef-planted corals to cover three soccer pitches. The program has also introduced innovative AI-based tracking methods to monitor the state of the coral and the increase in biodiversity. Think automated fish-tracking and identification.
They showed us a video similar to this one:
There was a brief merchandise and bathroom break for those so inclined, which our kids spent admiring the Coral Gardeners cat:
Then we boarded the boat and were on our way. We arrived at the garden after perhaps a 10 minute boat ride, and proceeded to look at the new coral, the more mature coral, and the reefs where the newly-grown corals have been planted. It’s one of the more vibrant sections of reef we’ve visited, with significant marine life.
After, we had the chance to help by cleaning some of the algae off the ropes. They also gave us a challenge – cleaning an entire section of rope on a single breath. I made a few attempts, but I was only able to get halfway through at most.
The tour took just under three hours, of which roughly half was spent out in the water. That was plenty for us – after about 80 minutes, we were ready to get back on the boat.
On the way back, we stopped for coconut bread and some sort of sweetened coconut jelly paste. I’d have taken a picture but it was demolished before I had the chance.
We took a few more moments to bask in the stunning views:
And then we returned to the Pao Pao ferry terminal.
Overall, we thought it was a fantastic tour. The kids really enjoyed learning about the program, and it’s important for them to see that there are programs trying to address the problems currently facing the globe. While it’s unlikely that programs like Coral Gardeners will be able to achieve the scale needed to effectively address the current mass coral die-offs underway, these kinds of pilot projects are spurring innovation in the sector – the automation underway has already saved a significant amount of time, and it may yet be possible to further automate the process so that it’s not quite so labour intensive.
As a thought exercise, I asked ChatGPT how many people would be needed to reverse the current die-off – and it spat out roughly 71 million people. That’s a lot of people, but roughly equivalent to the number of people that work in the fishing industry (58 million). Significantly fewer people would be needed if they were able to propagate more resilient coral that did not need to be actively maintained.
So it’s not fundamentally inachievable. And if it’s targeted to areas that are experiencing particularly high levels of die-off, then it’s still a valuable tool in the toolkit. That said, I expect coral gardening will work best if also combined with reducing pollution, preventing overfishing, and mitigating the effects of global warming. Coral Gardener already has projects across French Polynesia as well as Fiji and Thailand. They are also looking at establishing a new project in Indonesia.
But I digress. It was time to head back to the villa, where my wife and kids enjoyed a low-key afternoon while I went to the bank to pick up some Pacific Francs and to fill in the gaps on our grocery order.
I would like to say it was an unmitigated success, except the bank machine only gave out large bills equivalent to US$50s and $100s and I was utterly unable to find decent mixed greens. But we picked up enough to make it through for the rest of our trip. And thankfully the grocery store was willing to change out one of the larger bills.
Eventually I also returned home, and did some more writing – and spent more time with the camera:
Hanse Explorer Expedition Yacht – often privately chartered for a mere $265,000 per week, plus expenses. Sleeps 12 guests in 7 staterooms
Time for dinner – beef fajitas with the rest of our still-usable greens.
One more bit of admin to take care of this evening – checking into the Royal Tahitien, where we’ll be staying for our last remaining night in Tahiti. They gave us the option of booking a transfer for roughly US$90. It’s expensive for 3.5 km, but on the other hand we won’t have to worry as to whether we’ll actually fit in a cab. So we decided to go for it.
Then it was time to call it a night. We’ll be following our own advice tomorrow to slow the pace and take a day off – or try to, at least. We’ll see what the fates have in store for us.