Five a.m. on the Indian Ocean, a quarter mile off the small granite island of La Digue. Daylight is still an hour away, the sea flat and quiet, still too early for the call of morning birds and too dark for pirates.
And pirates are on everyone’s minds and lips here. Just the day before Somali pirates grabbed a tuna boat with a crew of 29 just to the north of where we motor, near Denis Island. A few days before they had taken a commercial dive boat and before that a private sailboat. Apparently being thwarted in waters closer to home – the Seychelles are easily six hundred miles from the coast of Somalia – due to an increase in navy ships patrolling, the brash pirates have headed here for new booty.
File Photo
Walking the hot-hot streets of the capital of Mahe yesterday it was hard to avoid the subject. Headlines in the daily “Nation” claim “Piracy at Top of President’s Agenda.” Lunch of garlic prawns is at the Pirate Arms (right next to the Pirate Arms Shopping Complex). On the docks, fishermen tell me they’re not going out to sea, for risk of being hijacked for ransom. In the Museum of Natural History literally the first exhibit in the door tells the story of the Seychelles’ very first residents: Pirates. From sometime in the 15th century to 1730, these islands were the hideaway of some of the most notorious, most famously the celebrated Olivier Le Vasseur, alias “La Buze,” who was said to have been the best of the best, or the worst of the worst, dependent on your take on pirates.
Last week I was a thousand miles to the east in the Maldives; I’ve come here to continue exploring the boundaries of what was once called the Sea of Zanj. Who knew that the news-garnering Somali pirates would show up at the same time?
Here, quickly, are a few things I know about the Seychelles, other than their pirate history: A 115 island archipelago, a mix of granite islands and coral cays, stretched over 700 miles (all its land combined makes the entire chain about twice the size of Washington D.C.). Arab traders were most likely the first to spy them; officially Portuguese Admiral Vasca da Gama first recorded them, in 1502. A former French and British colony, the country has been independent since June 29, 1976 and boasts the smallest population of any African state. Independence brought a 30-plus-year dictatorship, endemic corruption, and a thriving black market and near bankruptcy; only a recent IMF emergency loan kept it from sinking.
The economy is based on the twin Ts: Tourism and Tuna. A world leader in sustainable tourism, more than fifty percent of the island nation is nature conservancy. As the sun begins to glow along that line where blue meets blue, it reveals a smattering of tall green islands, rimmed by boulder strewn and white sand beaches.
By the end of the day yesterday there were rumors on the streets of Mahe that a French navy ship had attacked and freed the Taiwanese tuna ship and its crew; rumor also has it that a U.S. military ship is on the way from patrolling near the Gulf of Aden.
In the last few weeks the Somali pirates have roamed far from their own coastline, moving south and east to the Seychelles and Comoros Islands, where there are no international naval patrols. They want bigger, more expensive ships to hold for ransom and tuna boats to use as “mother ships” to town their speedboats. These are not all rag-tag independents; there’s talk of a “pirate mafia” and suggestions that one reason they’ve come to the Seychelles is to distract its Navy thus making sneaking drugs into the country easier. The pirates are trained fighters who frequently dress in military fatigues; their speedboats are equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment and they are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and various types of grenades.
At the moment a total of 14 vessels and about 200 crew members are currently under their control, despite increased patrolling by warships from China, the U.S., France and India. They are gambling that warships will not be sent this far south. The fact that the seas have been calm has allowed them to roam too and they have come back in force, seizing five boats in a 72-hour period from Somalia to the Seychelles.
“We’re going to end up probably playing a cat-and-mouse game in the next six months,” said Graeme Gibbon Brooks, managing director of the British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd.
From where I sit this morning, looking one hundred eighty degrees over a calm sea, it looks like a very, very big arena for playing games.
Late on a Sunday afternoon, hardly a day of rest in this part of the world, the small island of Eydhafushi is quiet. The men, most of who go to sea each day to fish or work at one of six nearby tourist resorts, are absent. School is out for a week’s holiday so kids of various ages scamper up and down the short, dusty streets. The women of the island of 3,000 are mostly in doorways or small backyards or sitting in laid-back sling chairs made of strong twine strung from metal frames lining the streets.
Like all Maldivian towns this is laid out in squares. From the start of any street you can stare down it and see blue ocean at the other end. A four-hundred-foot tall, red and white striped telephone tower adorned with a variety of satellite dishes shouts modernity has arrived; the head scarves worn by all women over thirty suggests a powerful connection to centuries-old tradition hangs on. As I walk the streets, obviously an outsider, I stop to chat people up and the responses are friendly, smiling. Everyone I meet – man, woman, child – gives me good, hard handshake as a hello. Though poor, this is not an impoverished place.
Despite the booming tourist business that exists on islands all around, most of these people have little contact with outsiders. Tourists in the Maldives are confined largely by geography to the resort islands. Water surrounds and there aren’t shuttles or ferries or water taxis to take people easily from island to island. During the recently ended thirty-year dictatorship, locals were strongly discouraged from mingling with visitors, concerned that negative influences from the west might rub off. Tourists drink alcohol, run around mostly naked and come to party, after all. By comparison, the local populace does not imbibe and is called to prayer several times a day (though there is reportedly a sizable heroin habit among many of the Maldive’s young people).
Concrete-block-and-cement walls lining the streets are painted in bright orange and purple and faded blue; older walls are made from pieces of coral, a construction now forbidden due to efforts to preserve the fragile reefs. Many of the walls bear stenciled black-and-red “Vote for Saleem” signs, which rather than feel defacing are actually a reminder of a positive thing that’s come to the Maldives in the last few years: Democracy.
I visit with a woman dressed in purple from head to toe; she is bundling reeds for roofs, explaining she is the breadwinner since her husband is sick. Fifty-two, she came here thirty years ago from a nearby, smaller island. In that time, she says, everything has gotten better. The economy. Politics. The way of life, including fifty channels of satellite television. And yes, she worries about rising sea levels, but primarily for her kids. “The seas are climbing … but what can I do?” is the plaint I hear from most here.
On the far side of the island a Woman’s Collective has turned out for a late-afternoon communal sweeping of a corner of the island. Bent at the waist, wearing headscarves and long dresses, they whisk brooms over the sand/dirt ground along the edge of the sea. Paid a small salary by the local government, the clean up is a good thing. But a bad side of island life here is evident just behind where they sweep: Piles of plastic garbage bags, which apparently did not make the once-a-month barge that carries garbage away to a nationwide rubbish-island near Male.
A new port reinforced by thick cement walls has been dredged in the last year, long enough to accommodate thirty to forty fishing boats. It was needed post-tsunami, which turned the local fishing fleet into matchsticks in December 2004. “You ask where the tsunami hit,” responds a 70-year-old man in green polo shirt, faded madras skirt and red Nike flip-flops. “Everywhere. That wave came from every direction at once.” He lucked out when the wave hit, since he was twenty feet up a coconut tree knocking off cocos.
Deeply tanned, his shaved head boasting a thin veneer of graying stubble, he tells me he still fishes when there’s a bit of wind, necessary because his boat has only a sail, no motor. A jack of all island trades, he’s fished, collected coconuts, worked construction and, not so long ago, was paralyzed over half his body due to some unexplained (to him) malady. Today he shows off his good health with the strongest handshake yet.
Quark Expeditions reported at 18:00 yesterday that its “Ocean Nova” had floated free of the rocks. Today it is heading up the Antarctic Peninsula, back to Ushuaia, Argentina though minus its passengers and crew, which were offloaded to the “Clipper Adventurer” earlier in the day yesterday … just to be safe.
Quark reports no tear in the ship’s hull, thus no leakage, which is a good thing. And lucky. According to Quark president Patrick Shaw: “We are grateful that no environmental damage occurred and that all travelers who were aboard Ocean Nova are safe.”
What I noticed yesterday when news of the grounding raced around the world – it’s incredible how fast news of tragedy moves these days, even from the planet’s most remote corners – was a definite decrease in appetite for another Antarctic accident. When the “Explorer” sank in November 2007, it was a very big deal to the world’s media. When the “Ushuaia” went aground in December 2008, it was again a big deal … I think because most of the media world assumed it would lead to another sinking. With the “Ocean Nova” there was a burst of interest, but now the media understands the difference between a grounded and a sinking vessel and there was a bit of a ho-hum emitted.
Which is concerning. I hope it’s not soon taken for granted that accidents in Antarctica are common place, thus less newsworthy. The reality is that each season there are more and more accidents – tourist ships hitting ice, rocks, etc. – and they need to be reported. My concern now, given the frequency of accidents along the Peninsula, is that in the very near future the only accidents in Antarctica to be deemed newsworthy are if there is a sizable leak, a sinking, a loss of life. All of which would be tragic for this still-pristine place.
One word of self-promotion in regard to the Antarctic Peninsula, “Paddler” has just published a very beautiful story drawn from our expedition last year by sea kayak, sailboat, foot and small plane. On the newsstands now!
The M/V “Ocean Nova,” operated by Connecticut-based Quark Expeditions, has been stuck on the rocks in Marguerite Bay for more than 24 hours. For the time being, the ship is not leaking oil and its captain is hoping it tides will lift it off the rocks. But having been in Marguerite Bay twice this past December, and seeing photographs of how the boat is lodged, it would appear he’s going to have to depend on unusually high tides to float the ship.
The ship apparently ran into trouble due to high winds, not unusual more than one hundred miles south of the Antarctic Circle. According to Quark, the 64 passengers and 41 crew are “following a normal programme of lectures” while the ship is stuck. They are awaiting arrival of the Spanish Naval ship “Hespedrides” and another Quark passenger ship, the “Clipper Adventurer.” If the ship cannot be unlodged, passengers will be transferred to the “Adventurer.” [14:00 EST, ALL PASSENGERS HAVE BEEN PUT ONTO THE "CLIPPER ADVENTURE," WHICH WILL SAIL FOR USHUAIA, ARGENTINA. DIVERS HAVE INSPECTED THE STILL-STUCK "OCEAN NOVA" AND ARE REPORTING NO LEAKING.]
In early December I was fifteen miles from the site of another Antarctic grounding, the M/V “Ushuaia,” which rested on the rocks for a couple days before being dragged off by a Chilean naval ship. It ultimately limped back to dry dock in Punta Arenas, Chile, its season cut in half.
It has been a rough season for Quark-chartered Antarctic ships. Earlier in the season the “Lyubov Orlova” – which the company was chartering for the season – was held at the dock in Ushuaia for several weeks by Argentine port authorities for failing inspection. Its passengers were either sent home or placed on other Antarctic-bound tourist ships.
Though overall tourist visits to the Antarctic Peninsula are down, probably due to sour economic times worlwide, there will still have been 40,000+ during the 2008-2009 season. More demand combined with less ice means more visits and more statistical risk of accident. Tour operators contend that it is still a small number, which is true relative to how many people visit a national park in the U.S. on any given summer day. But the consequences down south are potentially severe. If any of the ships currently plying the Peninsula were to run aground and sink – which the “Ocean Nova” could still do – it would leave behind a very tangible, and very difficult to monitor or clean-up, mess.
As the world raised a small hullabaloo last week in honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday it made me think long and hard about how the natural world has changed since his birth. I wonder what Darwin would make of these wild places that are now so linked with his name, his image, his writings? The timing is fortuitous too, because we are just finishing a new film about the Galapagos, specifically focused on man’s impact on the islands, and we’re calling it “What Would Darwin Think?”
Last May we spent several weeks in and around the bigger of the Galapagos islands, talking with locals and expatriate environmentalists about the relationship between its fragile ecosystem and a boom in mankind trodding its shorelines. Our goal was not to show (once again) how wondrous the wildlife is there but to show how man’s footprint is changing the place. And fast. The recently elected president of Ecuador has declared the Galapagos “endangered,” which takes most by surprise since only three percent of the island state is even accessible to man.
It’s not tourists exactly who are impacting Darwin’s laboratory, but all those who have arrived from mainland Ecuador to cash in on the tourist boom. They come, many of them with pick-up trucks, dogs, cats and kids, hoping to participate in the boom and hopefully get rich. Reality of course is that few get rich; in fact many can’t find jobs. On the big island of Santa Cruz there are today more than 25,000 residents; a decade ago there were 1,500. The pressure on the island is great; we watched a cargo boat arrive and spend three full days offloading all the good’s necessary to support the island for a single week.
The impact on the Galapagos wildlife is far-reaching. Unemployed fishermen often feel they have no option but to fish illegally, or to participate in the illegal sea cucumber and shark finning businesses (which are run by mafia-like organizations on the mainland). Others, tired of the crowds in Santa Cruz, are packing up and moving – with their dogs and cats – to some of the smaller, outer islands, where endemic species of reptile and bird will soon be made extinct thanks to their new neighbors.
In recent months I’ve been to a few wild places that are changing in part due to tourist booms: the Peninsula of Antarctica, the island of South Georgia and the Galapagos. All are suffering in similar fashion; each is wrestling on its own with how to control man’s increased visitations. It will be interesting to watch as they each fashion slightly different rules and regulations. I’ll remind you when our film – “What Would Darwin Think?” – is out; there will certainly be clues in it to the Galapagos’ future and plenty of pondering about Darwin’s 21st century take on the place.
After spending several days hiding out in a protected bay in the South Shetland Islands – one hundred miles off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula – the wounded ship M/V Ushuaia, run aground along the Peninsula ten days ago, is reported to have safely crossed the Drake Passage under her own power and is headed for dry dock and repairs in Punta Arenas.
Today’s report says there was no evidence of a continued leak from its damaged hull as it sailed. Antarpply Expeditions, the owner of the ship, insists the Ushuaia will be ready to continue its Antarctic season as early as December 28, January 7 at the latest. That, of course, depends on the severity of the damage caused when the ship ran on the rocks near Wilhelmina Bay. Updates to follow … thanks to our friends at IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) for the heads up.
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