January 11, 2011

Given Viktor´s accident yesterday only Adrian and I went diving today and we were very much looking forward to it. Neither one of us has ever dived before. A long time ago we thought abut getting diving certificates before the voyage, but we somehow didn´t mange to find the time.

We were joined by a Spanish couple who is also staying here. They were together with us on the day-excursion two days ago. We had gotten to know them a bit by now. They are really great and have a good tone with the kids, Fernando and Isabel (?) were on a six month trip. They had been to the US for three months before continuing with 3 months in the Pacific. Here they are with Adrian on the beach, while we are waiting to get picked up by the people from the diving center:

Helene came down to say good-bye and photograph us

We went out to the same abandoned pearl farm where we were yesterday, hoping to get to see some manta rays this time. Adrian and I got a thorough explanation on how the equipment worked and the very basics of diving. When the pressure builds up in your ears, hold your nose and equalize the pressure by blowing air up your nose. Otherwise breath normally and make the OK sign with your thumb and pointy finger whenever the instructor does the same.

We were given clear instruction for what to do if we encountered a manta ray. They are protected and there are strict rules. When you encounter one you must stop moving immediately. It is strictly forbidden to follow one, since this stresses them. Manta rays have actually disappeared from a well known location in Bora Bora because they have been stressed too much by divers. Next, it is absolutely forbidden to touch one. They have a protective layer on the outside and if a human touches it it can rupture and they can get an infection. The good news was that manta rays are curious creatures and will often come towards you.

We snorkled around for a while before Adrian was getting ready to do his dive. This was what they called a diving baptism (French expression for the very first time you do something). The instructor controlled everything. We were only allowed to breathe, look around, move our feet a bit and enjoy. Here Adrian is getting used to the equipment:

and then he was on his way.

I continued snorkeling while he did his 45 minute dive. There were plenty of corals and fish to discover. I was busy trying to take a good photo

when I noticed something big moving behind me. I turned around, and there it was. A gigantic manta ray with a wingspan way larger than my height. I froze and observed:

It turned around and came directly towards me:

Wow! What a fantastic feeling to be swimming with these majestic creatures. They swim with a grace worthy of royals. The ray circled around me and got very close. At one point I had to move to avoid touching it. After what must have been at least 5 minutes of mutual observation it slowly started drifting away.

I floated back to the boat with a big smile on my face.

Adrian had also seen a manta while he was diving and had been really close to it. He was a very happy diver.

Then it was my turn to dive. I have wanted to try diving for a very long time and was happy to finally get the chance. It was very strange to breathe under water and it took some time getting used to the sensation. I never stopped being very conscious of my breathing during the entire dive.

Equalizing the pressure by holding the nose and blowing was magic, it removed the pain and the pressure from the ears immediately. I cursed myself for not having discovered this earlier. All the dives I did as a kid, while holding my breath, down to 5-10 meters, came back to me. The limit for how deep I could go was never having to breathe.  I was a swimmer and trained 2 hours, 5 days a week, and had an excellent lung capacity. No, the limit was always that my ears started to hurt too much and I had to get back to the surface. I still remember the pain when i had pushed too far and gone too deep, Hey, if there is a deity out there, could you rewind and let me do my childhood dives one more time, please?

On the other hand human history is a chaotic system. At least that is my conclusion.

A chaotic system is a system where very small changes in initial settings create wildly different results, The classic example of a chaotic system is the weather and the so-called butterfly effect, If a butterfly in Brazil flaps it´s wings, it may result in a storm in the North Sea a month later. If a mouse farts in the woods in Norway, Brisbane might be flooded a month later because of the massive rainfall it has caused.

Since the weather has a huge impact on what happens to us humans I believe that our lives too are a chaotic system. You can control how you deal with the possibilities you are given in life, by making the choices which are correct to you. However, you cannot control many of the possibilities which suddenly pop up in your life. It´s how you react to them that matters.

As an example I met Helene because a friend of mine, Jørn Harald, got food poisoned in Finland. Because he got sick he had to stay 2 extra days at a youth hostel. During those days Helene showed up and she told him she was going to Norway. Jørn Harald said he knew someone who could show her around. He called them and they were not home, so he called me instead.

If he had chosen a different bag of sausages in that freezer in the supermarket in Finland I would not have had the wonderful wife and fantastic children I have today.

Further back, I met Jørn Harald because he had a room next to mine at university. I got my room because I started talking to a guy at a student bar. I went to that bar together with another friend, Paul, who had taken the initiative to go there.

I met Paul during a get-to-know-each-other event the first day at university. Over a hundred students were let loose in a room with many tables with 8 chairs around each, to create “talking groups”. I picked one at random and Paul, by chance, picked the same one.

And so I can continue. Small choices that seem to have little impact on your life can change it completely.

There is an interesting theory and thought experiment that suggests that every time we make a decision the universe is split into one universe for each possible decision. In some other universe there is an Eirik who sat down at another table. He met other people, never got married, and died lonely and poor after he had used all his money on fancy fishing equipment.

OK, Odin, sorry, I was just kidding. I can live with the memory of that ear pain and the humiliation of having to admit that I discovered how to dive deep at a very ripe age, as long as I get to keep this fantastic family I have and my interesting and fulfilling life so far.

Am I getting off-topic again? Sorry.

The dive was a breathtaking experience. We went down to about 15 meters and there was a very rich coral “forest” down there. Being deep down really gave a very different experience than snorkeling. One thing that surprised me though was the noise. Several people had mentioned the great calm and silence you experience when you dive. There was no such thing, my own breathing and bubble making created a constant loud noise.

I was hooked, however. As soon as I get home I want to take one of those diving license courses.

Adrian was also blown away by the experience.

Next we moved outside the lagoon where the other divers would continue the diving day. We were finished and hung around the boat together with Ralph, the boat driver, which is polynesian:

:

He asked us if we would mind going back into the lagoon for a while. No problem. He took us to a place just outside a small fishing “village.” There were a couple of houses on a motu. Further out there was a fish trap. Basically it consisted of two leading fences in the water at an angle of maybe 45 degrees to each other. At the end was a cage with some sort of one-way entrance for the fish. In addition to tourism, fishing is the other income generator on Tikehau. Thanks to the airport fresh fish can be transported and sold on the market in Tahiti.

There was someone out at the trap and Ralph waved and yelled at the guy. He turned the boat towards him and explained that the guy was killing sharks. After Alexandre´s lecture on how protected they were here I was very puzzled and asked why. Ralph explained that the sharks go into the fish traps and eat the fish there. Sharks are instinctively protective of their area. If a shark feels offended it will stay around to kill or scare away what offended it. So, if you release a shark from a fish trap it will stick around and just go right back in again. The solution then is to kill them.

As we got closer we could see sharks being killed with a very long spear. The guy pierced them, got them up in his boat, slit them almost in two and threw them out into the water. I made sure to film it all. Here are some snapshots from the video:

He swam over to the boat with sharks in his hands.

and took one on board

It was fascinating listening to them speaking Tahitian Polynesian. To me it sounded like a south-east Asian language, like Vietnamese or Cantonese. They also use the glottal stop as a consonant (found in the English “uh-oh”).

Once the guy had left us we headed back. I was puzzled at what we had seen. Ralph explained that the guy told him he had killed 40 sharks in the last 24 hours. What a massacre.

When we got back the diving instructor was hopping mad and shook his head. He did not know this shark killing was going on and said that if he had seen it going on he would have filmed it and showed it to the mayor so they could stop this criminal behavior. Sharks are plentiful here today, but they are animals who reproduce very slowly and can quickly become extinct. All the fishermen had to do was install an electronic shark-repellent device on their fishing trap.

I couldn´t help thinking that this was a classical conflict between a culture where fishermen have always gotten rid of sharks this way and western ideas about conservation. Of course I believe that this shark killing must be stopped, but explaining it to that fisherman was probably not an easy task.

I coughed and mentioned that if I had managed to hold the camera steady enough in the waves (there was so much light I couldn´t see anything on the screen of the camera) I probably had it all on my memory card.

Once we got back to our beach

I quickly convinced Helene to try diving tomorrow together with Viktor. His wounds were healing fast and I knew how much he wanted to try diving. I agreed with the diving instructor that he could bring a USB key tomorrow and get the video and photos I had taken.

I had a look at the video and found out I had caught it all, despite the difficulty of filming given all the movements from the waves. Alexandre was also very interested and disgusted. I showed him the video. He told me he would go into Tuherahera and talk to the mayor, first thing in the morning.

Eirik

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