Wyprawa badawcza Morze Południowe

Playing Robinson Crusoe

Travelling through the South Seas and seeing deserted islands makes you want to conquer one and live the Robinson Crusoe experience. And our team had the urge to explore and search for creepy crawlies. Setting foot on a footprint-free desert island is an experience like no other.

Despite the sparse vegetation, most of the islands have been inhabited at some point. These are often seasonal inhabitants who are there to cultivate a coconut plantation and dry the coconut flesh for collection twice a year. They need a harvest of 1500 kg to meet the collection costs.

The collector pays half of the purchase price and the state pays the other half! Anyone who has ever peeled coconuts and dried the meat can imagine how much labour is required for 1500 kg!

The fauna on land was limited, with crabs as the most common species. Some of these were large and beautifully coloured and it was crabs, not rats, which created the many holes in the ground. There was also a gecko and a skink species. Either they were all juveniles or they were both dwarf species with a maximum length of eight centimetres.

Some of the atoll rings had shallow water openings from the outer reef to the lagoon. There was plenty of life in these shallow seawater pools, from baby sharks (blacktips) to the moray eels that like to hunt there. They do this because their prey can’t escape so quickly in shallow waters.

Aside from the town Fakarava, the Fakarava Atoll also has a small airport, which only opens and operates when an aircraft is due. Some roads are even tarmaced and there are two supermarkets, which are more market than super. Neither is this the best place for jogging and cycling.