Tim’s Fijian experience begins… May 2009

Bula from Fiji!

Well I’ve been in Fiji now for 3 weeks so thought I’d give you guys an update on what I’ve been up to and tell you much how I’m enjoying conducting research on dolphins in a tropical paradise (yep, it’s that good!).

I arrived into Fiji on May 11 and was in Suva for the first few days sorting out some things with my supervisor, then it was off to Takalana Retreat, the place I would be calling home for the next month or so. After over 3 hours in a van, the final hour and a half of which was spent on a butt-cheek numbing rough dirt road, we arrived to Takalana and hopping out of the van and heading down to the two small bure’s (villas if you will) my jaw just dropped. The view from them was absolutely incredible. The place is located on the NW coast of the main island of Viti Levu and overlooks the ocean where you can see various Fijian islands off in the distance. It’s hard to describe in words without actually seeing pictures, so the link below is to my facebook pics that I’ve posted from my time in Fiji so far. I’ve also put the link to the Takalana website (very simple, but if you wanna stay there, which I recommend you do, the contact details are on the site).

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2254551&id=10617245&l=f9e87b91d7

http://takalana.blogspot.com

It really is a magical spot, a best kept secret I guess. It only sleeps 10 in total (2 bure’s of 4 and 6 beds, queen bed and bunks in each). I stay in one of the bure’s when there aren’t guests so I’m lucky to get a queen bed with an ensuite. When we have guests, which are mostly ex pats from Suva on the weekend (during week very quiet), I sleep in a little Fijian hut nearby which is quite cosy, but fine nonetheless. I’m a guest there so I’m treated like one even if I’m the only one there. Food is cooked for me everyday which is delicious. I’m having soo much fresh fish, fruit and Fijian vegetables I’m feeling healthier on the inside as every day goes by! In Suva now as I write this and have been trying to have as much beef as I can because I know when I go back to Takalana tomorrow (Thurs) it’s back to fish and chicken. Been eating a lot of rice and stir fry out there also. There’s no electricity in Takalana, so we have a generator that runs from about 6-10pm each night that is used to power some lights and that’s when I charge my laptop and camera batteries etc. The view from my bedroom window and from the table where I eat and work is pretty much breathtaking. I sit alone and eat most nights because I’m the only guest there. The serenity is very nice, hearing the waves crash on the beach, but I must admit it is nice when guests are around. There is a cook/cleaner named Vule who is always around. Her English is pretty good and we get on really well. When we have more than a few guests a couple of young girls from the local village (of which there are two) they come up and help. The manager is a young Fijian guy (by young I mean 30) named Jay who is the one that takes me out on the boat and we eat together when he’s around. We get on unbelievably well, joking around all the time, and as a result have become good mates. He’s really really appreciative of me being there as I’m teaching him all about the dolphins and about taking tourists out to see the dolphins and how to operate a boat around the dolphins (given the experience I have on tourism boats and the readings I’ve done). The research I’m doing is helping his business out because nothing is known about these spinner dolphins that come to Moon Reef, but I’m still extremely appreciative of my supervisor Cara for organising and liaising with Jay to get this research done. It’s been a lot of work to get this to happen, but it’s a win win for both Cara and myself, and for Jay and his business as he is actually the only official dolphin watch place in Fiji. The business is still very young, and Jay is always learning, and he always thanking me for being here and helping him out, when it’s actually him I should be thanking (which I do of course) for allowing me to stay and conduct my research.

So now a bit about my research. While staying at Takalana I’m looking at a population (30-40 individuals) of spinner dolphins that come into a place called Moon Reef (photo is on Jay’s website) that is approx. 20min by boat from the beach at Takalana. The dolphins come into the protected reef in the early morning and rest (“sleep”) during the daytime, then leave between 3 and 4 pm every day to head to deeper waters to feed at night (similar behaviour has been observed in spinner dolphins in Hawaii). My research is determining if it is the same individuals that are returning to Moon Reef, and I do this by taking photos of their dorsal fins and looking for distinctive markings (nicks, scars, shape etc). I take photos at every encounter every day and then have been using the photos to determine re-sightings and thus site fidelity. So far I have noticed that there are definitely re-sightings, but how many it is too early to determine (you need quite a large data set, and I only have 11 days so far). I’m also looking at behaviour to determine if these animals are actually resting, and for how long during the day. I’m still yet to do a full day of observations and go there really early to see what time they enter the reef, but that will be done in the next couple of weeks. They call them spinner dolphins because they actually jump out of the water and spin on a longitudinal axis, up to seven revolutions before they hit the water again. Pretty spectacular! I have some pretty good shots of this and will send out a link later so you can see these acrobatic animals in action.

Generally after my photo-ID and behavioural observations are done (1-2 hours total a day) I go for a snorkel around the reef. I invested in one of those Olympus utough cameras that are waterproof and shockproof before I came here and man has it been worth it. It’s awesome to take photos of coral and fish underwater. I’m hoping to be able to use it to get some underwater footage and maybe even determine the sex of some of the dolphins. We’ll see. After data collection and some snorkelling (weather dependent of course) I head back to Takalana and then enter the data onto my laptop. I’m keeping very busy with all the work I have to do, but I have been lucky enough to see a few things and get some real Fijian cultural experiences.

There are two villages near Takalana, both on the beach, the closest of which Jay is from and his father is the head (not an official chief like some other villages but pretty much the same). His father is 86 years old, kayaks a couple of kilometres every day dragging a fishing line behind his kayak, no bait, just small pieces of hessian bag around the hook and the line attached to a bleach bottle. He caught 56 fish the other morning! Amazing! When I went kayaking to the mangroves a couple of weeks back I tried my hand at this fishing style, and actually caught two fish! I’ve never caught a fish without bait before, let alone being on a kayak pulling it in with my hands then having to use my drinkbottle to whack the fish on the head so it would stop flapping around in the back of my kayak. It was a really cool experience, and I earnt my dinner, well I actually caught it that night! I think it’s amazing how simply these people in the villages live and how they live pretty much purely off the land. Everything is so fresh, and I’ve had my fair share of Fijian dishes. I went to Jay’s village the other day for Mother’s Day and had a real Fijian village experience. It was the only day of the year where the men cooked and the women ate first. There’s only about 100 people in this village and so I was with the men (the only white man of course, kids staring at me at all the time) and after the women finished we went into the small hall (a big room basically) and sat down on the bamboo mats with the food lined up in two lines. You sat either side of the food, legs crossed, and ate. They gave me a spoon but most men were using their hands to eat off their plate. There never seems to be a shortage of food in the villages as they grow pretty much everything (things like bananas, pineapples, coconuts, peanuts, kasava and taro (roots that tastes like potato) and otta (leafy stringy plant that is really nice in coconut milk). Many fish dishes are had which is one of the reasons I think they live such a healthy lifestyle. I have tried kava, I did so when the local village (the other one) had what is called a ‘meke’ (a traditional Fijian dance) in which dancers from Suva came and asked the chief of the village to be taught the meke (unique to each village) and to stay in the village. They then have a day to learn it and then perform it in the village hall for all the villagers. While this is going the men of the village are in one corner grinding up the kava with water and passing it around. It pretty much tastes like muddy water, and after having a few that night (not feeling much mind you, I think it was fairly weak) I woke up the next day sick in the guts and I reckon it was because my stomach was full of muddy water! After the dancers finish their performance there is much singing and dancing and being a white man the Fijian women just come up to you, tap you and then you’re pretty much obliged to dance with them. Just like a school dance only it’s the women doing the choosing! It was really good fun, and an amazing cultural experience, one of which I was privelidged to experience.

I have also been to the local waterfall which you can slide down the rocks into the pool at the bottom. It’s only small but jumping off the rocks into the water is still pretty cool. I went across to Nagani Island last weekend and stayed at the resort there (that and a village are the only thing on a small island). Jay grew up there as his Dad is a carpenter and used to work there so we got a bloody good deal on accommodation. Of the 18 bure’s that are there, there were only a total of 9 guests in the entire resort, including us. Tourism is very low in Fiji at the moment but seriously people, there is nothing here to worry about. The international media has seemed to instil fear into people which has prevented them from travelling to Fiji and tourism appears to be really suffering. So if you were thinking of coming to Fiji but were worried about the political situation, don’t be! It’s totally fine, and Fijian people are amazingly friendly. The dollar has dropped here as well, giving you even more of an incentive to travel! My scholarship money is certainly going a lot further! Last weekend I also went across to Lavuka on the island of Ovalau (former capital of Fiji) so that was cool to see where Fiji originated officially. It’s awesome to be able to just get on a boat and travel between islands. Jay has an unbelievable amount of contacts all over the place so being with him is making my experience here just that much sweeter. He is a former Divemaster so is going to take me to a place called E6, which is apparently one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, and it’s only an hour from Takalana. I’m hanging out for a dive, and he knows spots where you see sperm whales, short-finned pilot whales and other forms of whale and dolphin, so just the thought of seeing a species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) that I haven’t seen before is bloody exciting. That’s the whale nerd in me coming out. I cannot wait to see short-finned pilot whales so I really hope I do while I’m here. Fingers crossed!

So all in all things are going great. I’ve been in Suva almost three day s now and actually can’t wait to get back to Takalana and the dolphins. Suva is ok, but is pretty dirty and I guess I’m spoilt in the tropical paradise of Takalana. The villagers actually know me up there. I went for a run the other day on the dirt road, past the village, and there were two teenage girls sitting on a bridge. “Bula” I said to them as I ran past, they replied “Bula Tim”. I was thinking, how the hell do they know my name?! So I asked Jay and he said that pretty much most people in the village know who I am. I’m the white man staying at Takalana that is studying the dolphins. Some call me ‘dolphin man’. Hey, I can sure deal with that! ;-) It’s soo bloody exciting that in a couple of months I’m going to become an expert (a world expert if you will) on this population of dolphins here in Fiji as no one knows anything about them. The idea of that just pumps me up every day to get out there on the water and collect data.

So I’ll be up at Takalana for another couple of weeks and then we’ll re-assess where I’m at in terms of how much data I’ve collected and that will determine when I will head across to Koro Island to look at spinners over there. It’s looking like around June 20-25 I’ll head across to Koro. Spend a few weeks there (sightings dependent) then head back to Takalana/Moon Reef for a couple more weeks before flying out of Fiji on August 17. If all goes to plan I hope to spend a few days travelling before I fly out. It will be my BDay the weekend before I leave so thought I might treat myself.

Well, this has been an epic email and I need to get back to analysing images of fins, so I will say “modde” (spelling I’m not sure of, but it means bye in Fijian) and hope all is well in your part of the world. Things are going great guns with me in this beautiful part of the world!

All the best from rugby mad Fiji,

Tim, Timmy, Timbo (aka dolphin man)