AUCKLAND, March 8 (AFP)
Starvation is stalking a small civilisation of singing Polynesians already on the
verge of extinction as their atoll sinks below the Pacific Ocean. Takuu or Mortlock atoll, Papua New Guinea's
eastern most territory, is
sinking due to dramatic plate tectonics, taking with it a community of 400 people who have over 1,000 songs
they can sing from memory.
As the rising sea-water floods and permanently contaminates island gardens which grew the staple taro,
supplies of rice have dried up. Sione Paasia, president of the Port Moresby based "Association Na Takuu",
warned this week of "news of an impending starvation on the Mortlock if relief is not sent soon or sea transport
service does not resume immediately.
"The root of the problem seem to lie in the lack of transport services
and the effects of rising sea-level...."
He told AFP Thursday the situation was rapidly worsening.
"Takuu people here in Moresby are getting frantic trying to find out if a
relief ship is going out," he said.
Atoll Queen called in January but nothing since. He sounded the alarm after atoll Chief Avo Sini sent a message
two days ago:
"Since the Atolls Queen left Takuu in January 2001, no other boat or ship has visited the island. Takuu is short
of rice, tin pis, etc, etc....
Some more gardens have been affected by the sea level rise. There are some people who are in danger of not
having anything to eat at all. There are students, teachers, and work men who are stranded on the island."
Paasia said there were rumours another ship would send out relief supplies from Rabaul, 520 kilometres (322
miles) west, but nobody had been able to confirm it. He said food from Atoll Queen would have lasted until
the end of January. People would have no fuel to go fishing beyond the reef and as sea-water was flooding into
gardens they could not harvest taro. When the sea-water drained away, the taro was rotten. There were
coconuts and bananas, but not enough.
Part of PNG's North Solomons Province Takuu's contact with the outside world depended on an Australian aid
funded ship, Sankamap. Its been tied up in Australia for over a year as PNG has not paid its bills.
On Tuesday Paasia appealed to deputy prime minister Michael Ogio, who is also the local member of
parliament.
"We think there has been grave injustice to the atolls," he wrote.
"Is it going to take the loss of life and property on the atolls for
anything long-term to be in place to cover the loss of the MV Sankamap?"
Paasia said due to global warming and plate movements, scientists believe
the islands were sinking.
"The saline water table affect the growing and harvesting of taro, a stable food in our diet forcing 2500 people
to depend on a poor diet of store food," he said.
Noting a University of Papua New Guinea study which gave Takuu only five
years, Paasia said no amount of money could prevent the sea level rise.
"But what we can do is prevent the sea from swarming the land for an extended period of time and enabling the
people of Mortlock to continue to live on the islands for as long as possible (perhaps another 150 years). "
Compounding an already perilous situation is the fact that Takuu is
administered from Buka, Bougainville, 250 kilometres (155 miles) away, where
a chaotic peace is being maintained after a decade long civil war. Phone links to Buka have failed.
Takuu is an extraordinary Pacific story; geographically it is in Melanesia but its people are Polynesians. An
epidemic hit it in the 1870s and just 13 people survived.
In 1896 a Samoan-American woman, "Queen" Emma Coe, bought it for four axes and 4.5 kilograms (10
pounds) of tobacco. Under Imperial German protection she had all the trees chopped down and replaced with
coconuts, and she imported New Irelanders to work them.
University of Auckland's Richard Moyle, an ethnomusicologist who is writing the first, and what may be the last
ethnology of the people of Takuu, was on the island when the tide seemed to go out and then not come
back in for another week.
"Thinking about it now I realise the island must have risen during the
night, then gone back slowly."
He fears now they are doomed.
"They are in dire straits now," he said.