When climate comes to call...

Last August, I spent almost every afternoon hiking 45 min. down through coconut groves to reach the beach and the freshwater springs the bubbled up from the rocks to have my bath. It was the height of the drought in what turned out was one of the longest dry seasons in recent memory. While our tank never ran completely dry and I was spared the backbreaking effort of hauling gallons of drinking and cooking water back up the mountain, this wasn’t the case for most of my students and their mothers who lived even further up the mountain. (Of course, many people here don’t have the benefit of a rainwater-collecting tank and make this trek year round to supplement what they catch in buckets.) Classes were canceled after lunch so students could beat the heat at the beach—and have more time to haul precious water.

Anticipating a summer like the last, I left my poncho at home this year. It was a mistake. El Nino has sent us one of the longest wet seasons in recent history. Over a month-and-a-half late, the rains finally gave way to clear skies and a heat wave this week. You are undoubtedly thinking, what a blessing: a cooler clime and a reprieve from afternoon bathing treks! But for locals, and extra months of rain has meant ground too wet for planting the taro that is to be their staple in the coming months. Saturated ground will rot the tubers, so they must be planted after at least a few days dry spell. I’ve heard Mama boast that her initiative to plant her garden during the smattering of sunny days will reward her with a well-provisioned table while others subsist off bananas alone–or steal her taro, which has already begun to happen. Thanks to the almost adolescent mood swings in seasons around here, locals may soon find themselves scouring empty gardens and trees for staples and fruits stunted by the seasonal swings.

Lack of food has never been a problem on Karkar. The bush is wild with bananas, breadfruit, nuts, and in the rainy season, mangos. But then again, the weather hasn’t ever been quite like this either.

Climate change seems to be on everyone’s lips these days, but while in America our lifestyle and geographic position has rendered the issue mostly rhetoric, in PNG and other island nations, it’s no matter for debate: the seasons are changing, and with them, so must the people who measure their lives by the weather. Moreover, the strange currents of global warming have kept the tides rolling in—and climbing the beaches here higher each year.

Tabel Primary School, where Panango volunteers Stephen and Yihana have spent their last two months, is perched on one such tide-encroached shoreline. My Pops spent his childhood on this beach, or rather, the sands now 50 feet off the shore and three feet under water. Waves break over the sandy shoal that marks the historic tide line. Just beyond, the shallows descend over a coral cliff, still home to an abundance of fish and a family of dolphins we watched playing last week. I can’t say how this reef has changed over the years, but just a little further up the coast the host parents of two other volunteers lament the decline in abundance and size of the fish. (Mind you, it can’t be too bad it they’re still dining on octopus at least once a week) No one can say if this is a result of overfishing or climate change, but I imagine it’s a little of both. Still further up the coast, the evidence of environmental degradation caused partly by rising tides is irrefutable.

One of the places I was most keen to revisit this summer was Mater’s coral reef. My day last summer spent floating over the vibrant purple, green, pink and orange corals off Mater’s black sand beach was one of my more memorable on Karkar. I talked up this reef to incoming volunteers and I eagerly led an expedition out there the first week we were on the island.
As we swam along the shore before swimming out to the reef, I took notice of the steep dirt cliff and the trees hanging over it, clinging to soft earth as it crumbled out from under them, but thought nothing of it. (Unfortunately, I also took little notice of the minefield of sea urchins we swam over and would have to swim back over later as the tide receded.) When I finally had gotten out to the point I remembered last year, I was devastated—as was the reef. Large swaths of bleached fingers marked the graves of what were just last year thriving communities of miniature organisms. Some species had managed to hold on, spreading their colonies to new rocks but in so doing, replacing the diversity that had once flourished.

Distressed, I swam into the shore after an hour and immediately began asking, “How?!” The rising temperature of the sea was first proposed. Even fractions of a degree can alter sea life. Someone else said a change in salt concentration made possible by the rising tides mixing with the fresh water that comes out from the underground mountain aquifers at the beach. The harvest of the coral was unfortunately another likely possibility, since grinding coral produces powdered lime, or cambang in Pidgin, the reactive agent favored by betel nut chewers. And with an island of addicts, crushed coral is in high demand.

But when I made it back to the women’s wash area, they had yet another idea and pointed to the cliffs by way of explanation. It was then I took notice of the heavy erosion and the uncountable grains of sand that are finding their way onto the reef, bathing the coral in a much unwelcome sand bath. I’m no expert. I can’t say for sure the erosion is chiefly responsible for the reefs declining health, but I do know that if a 30 foot cliff sifted its soil onto of me, I wouldn’t be happy—and I can’t imagine the coral would be either.

This Wednesday I found myself back in Mater’s bay. I wasn’t intending to take a swim. In fact, I’d spent the day walking to check up on our southern-most volunteers and I wasn’t toting swimming attire (shorts and a t-shirt; swim suits are culturally inappropriate most places here). But there was an unlikely yacht parked off shore, and my volunteers encouraged me to meet its captain.

Chris Bone, yachtsman and founder of the non-profit Oceanswatch, docked in Mater’s waters last week. Returning for his second or third year, he and his crew of three will spend two weeks doing a “reef check,” essentially a survey of the reef’s health, and training three local boys in the process with the intention that they will take over reef checks in the future. Their findings: though the reef was in fact badly damaged, he thinks probably by some storm or violent natural event, there are many small corals growing back. He wouldn’t confirm my hypothesis that the sand’s erosion was responsible for current destruction, but he agreed that erosion could certainly wreck havoc and that rising tide levels could be at fault.

It’s Chris’s hope that with over 150 yachts registered with his non-profit, he will have soon have teams doing similar reef monitoring and community development in seas throughout the Pacific and Caribbean. I’m inspired by his initiative, in part because he appears to have harnessed rich yachtsmen into spending their money to aid conservation and development projects in the third world, but more so because his program trains young locals to take part in the conservation of their own natural resources. This year, he’s taught three young men to scuba dive as well as complete the paperwork for a reef check. And if there is hope for this reef, it’s in the hands of these young men. Yet, while these men work to record and combat the effects of slowly rising waters, on the other side of the island, a much bigger tide has drawn in local attention.

Last year, in addition to our drought, we had the infamous “tsunami” incident. Lost in translation, rumors of a tsunami made its way around the island one afternoon, inciting Christa and Jess to literally sprint up the volcano laden with their full packs much to the amusement of locals, who assured them that they would be safe a mile inland. (They persisted to an elevation of at least 500 feet.) The fabled wave was actually just a high tide on the other side of the island, but even a rise of an extra 5 feet was enough to wash through some of the stilted-houses perched on the shore. No one was hurt, but the retreating waters left their message:

On Karkar, climate change is on the doorstep.