dive slate
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and through ingestion of ocean-
borne pollutants.
Although Pacific leatherbacks
range from Canada to Korea to
the Southern Ocean, feeding on
jellyfish, they only nest on high-
energy beaches in the tropics.
So fast has been the wave
of local extinctions from Sri
Lanka to Vanuatu and so steep
the declines at once-teeming
nesting beaches that scientists have
predicted Pacific leatherbacks will be
extinct in a matter of years. Only urgent,
meticulous care of nesting females, eggs
and hatchlings at a handful of sites such
as Tetepare is maintaining populations
and allowing enthusiasts like me
to experience the awesome and
humbling experience of witnessing
nesting leatherbacks.
Hobete jokes that he is a “spare
part” for TDA— a man with many
jobs. When the oihare are not nesting,
he is employed monitoring green
sea turtles in Tetepare’s seagrass
lagoons, trochus shells on the coral
reefs or populations of the massive coconut
crab inside and outside the eight-mile-long
Tetepare marine protected area. Once a
month he takes his turn with two other
rangers to patrol the entire 45-square-mile
island, ensuring that occasional fishermen
and hunters from nearby islands respect the conservation
and sustainable-harvest rules set by TDA to protect their
resources. The TDA rangers ensure that traditional owners
respect size and boat limits for their harvests and, most
important, make sure no commercial operators or poachers
access the islands’ rich waters.
Back near the Tetepare Ecolodge leafhouses (built
entirely from traditional materials) another of TDA’s “spare
parts” men, Twoomey, is standing up in his dugout canoe,
scanning the seagrass lagoon for the telltale signs of vena,
or dugong. Twoomey is married to Mary Bea, one of the
island’s most influential landholders, who stood up against
the unscrupulous logging of her island and instead charted
a path for her people to generate sustainable tourism
income for the island. Twoomey built the Tetepare Field
Station that accommodates visiting scientists, rangers and
tourists, but today he is doing his favorite job on the island.
Twoomey is the “vena whisperer;” he
has gained the trust of the local dugong
population so he can quietly
paddle one or two tourists out
to swim with these inquisitive
cows of the sea. There are
typically no more than a handful
of guests on Tetepare, the
largest uninhabited island in the
South Pacific, and the dugongs,
along with herds of bumphead
parrotfish, squadrons of reef
sharks and rays, lazing green and
hawksbill turtles and myriad brilliant
coral reef fish, are unusually blasé
toward awestruck snorkelers.
Every visitor not only enjoys an
authentic experience on one of
the world’s last “wild” islands,
but they also support the
conservation of the lowland
rainforests and teeming reefs of
Tetepare through employment
of local cooks, guides and boat
drivers. Diving at Tetepare
can be arranged through Dive
Munda and promises great potential in unexplored
drop-offs, World War II wrecks and maybe even a village
believed to have been cast off the island and sunk by one
of Tetepare’s spirits.
TDA has two certified divers, Tony and Mosely,
who have acted as guides to divers from cruise boats
and yachts as well as researchers who have traveled to
Tetepare. The small-scale, locally managed ecotourism
and conservation enterprise on Tetepare has now been
operating for more than a decade and has become a
model for sustainable community-based management
of Pacific islands of high conservation value.
The battle to save the forests, cultural sites, reefs
and endemic birds, bats and fish of Tetepare from
destructive logging is chronicled in the book The Last
Wild Island: Saving Tetepare.
— John Read, Ph.D.
16
|
SPRING 2014
Tetepare Descendents’ Association members
successfully put an end to unsustainable
logging of the island and have established
and maintained a marine protected area to
promote the continued survival of dugongs,
leatherback turtles and other species.
ANTHONY PLUMMER
MICHAEL ESBACH
MICHAEL ESBACH
ANTHONY PLUMMER
ANTHONY PLUMMER
