Stars and Crocodiles

This week I’ve been getting ready for the voyage to Ngulu atoll in Yap. The celestial navigation class meets a few nights a week at the Palau Community College, in Koror. We’ve been learning the 32 star points of the star compass as well as wayfinding stars – in local navigation there are no maps, it’s all in your head. Rather than take a straight bearing to a location, the traditional sailors island hopped, so each new island has a new set of way-finding stars. It’s not only stars that illuminate the passage, though – clouds, ocean swells, and birds are also used to navigate.

One night we drove out to the causeway from Koror to Meyuns. Cars whirred past, and a gaggle of joggers, walkers, and bikers wound through us as we gathered round Sisario for our lesson. The lights of Koror flashed on the southwestern horizon, the stadium glowing for the baseball game. We stood stock still, heads upturned to the constellations, as though in some kind of trance.

Before we left the classroom, Sisario had drawn a blown up version of his hand, marking out degree measurements at his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, even the nail beds. Out on the causeway, we stood with our hands outstretched, squinting into the darkness to measure that area between the horizon and one of the lower stars. Measuring from the tip of the big dipper, Ursa Major, to the North Star. Each hand is different, Sisario explained, so we were out to calibrate our own degree measurements.

Growing up sailing through Casco Bay in Maine, my parents made sure to teach me basic navigation. I can still see my father bent over the chart table in his foul weather gear, fingering green charts and plotting our course, balancing a cup of tea in one hand, parallel ruler in the other.

A captain, my father swears by celestial navigation using a sextant – and in some of our longer trips, in between impromptu guitar lessons with my uncle Jerry, he had my sister and I taking sightings from the stern. It’s one of those instances growing up where I wished I had paid more attention. This time round, I’m more prepared. I’ve been reading up on traditional navigation and had a chance to interview Sisario last week. I'm hoping to document our journey through audio - and will be experimenting with recording in rain and wind conditions to prepare for the trip this week, while gatheirng some anticipation on tape with my fellow crew.

Thursday we raised the mast down at the port in Malakal. The canoe is beautiful – 60 feet long, with a 40 by 10 foot platform. Wayne, one of my fellow students, and now a seasoned navigator himself, showed me around the canoe – our hammocks, the navigation platform, the head (or toilet, one corner of the canoe, where we’ve been promised a bucket), the guiding paddle. The mast soars above the canoe platform, painted white with yellow lines zigzagging in a diamond pattern around its square sides. The canoe is simple, functional, and its boundedness suggests an intimacy among its passengers that I’ll soon experience first hand.


One person I've spent time interviewing lately is Joshua Eberdong, an old friend of Obak’s. Sarah Klain, a friend of Carolyn Barnwell’s and a former Peace Corps from Falmouth, Maine, worked with Joshua when she was here from 2005-2007, and recommended I get in touch with him.

Joshua retired from the department of Marine Resources in December when he turned 60, as arguably Palau’s leading turtle, crocodile and dugong conservationist.

Joshua's father was a fisherman. Growing up, Joshua and his brothers became acute observers of the world around them. At the helm of a canoe or bamboo raft, Joshua learned the ebb and flow of the tides, spawning seasons, the cycle of the moon, when fish swam in schools and areas of the reef which they frequented. He also learned to conserve. Fish only for what you need, his father instructed them.

As a young man he hunted crocodile in the mangroves of Babeldaob, making a pretty penny selling skins to a Japanese company. But as he began to notice the depletion of the crocodile population, he grew a conscience.

There's an old Palauan story which tells of a time when the crocodile and Palauan spoke to one another, when they had a pact of mutual respect. Since abandoning his post as a hunter, Joshua has dedicated his life to observing and protecting the crocodile population in Palau. Crocodiles fill an important niche in the ecosystem, he explained. Among other things, they eat sickly fish that might infect a larger population, and they turn over the mangrove swamp to promote healthy root growth. While he insists that he his no expert in the field - he has no degree - Joshua's breadth of knowledge is astounding. If there's one thing I've learned in my travels, it's that traditional or local knowledge often trumps western degrees. There's a place for both, of course, but certainly there's a marked difference between reading something out of a book and studying first hand from the prow of a canoe?

Last Friday I went to visit Joshua at his home on a tiny island suspended between the two causeways that connect Koror and Babeldaob. Tucked in a drive fringed with hibiscus trees, is a small house, a garage - and a crocodile reservation. It's the kind of place you would likely miss driving by, or else notice it one afternoon and always wonder who it was that lived there. Joshua has been breeding crocodiles and releasing them back into the wild for a long time now - working to recuperate that population that was lost during his years hunting. When I visited, he had five crocodiles in the reserve.

The water was still and glossy that morning, so smooth you could count the leaves reflected in the cloudy depths. With seeming ease he pointed out beady eyes emerging from amidst the mangrove roots. At one point he left to look for some fish and returned with a frozen chicken thigh and his grand daughter in tow. "I can find crocodiles, too," she announced, with a note of defiance. I watched as he wafted the chicken out on a bamboo fishing pole over the water. With a sudden crash, a 10-foot crocodile exploded from the water, shattering the stillness of the reserve. I jumped backwards and gasped. Joshua and his grand daugther barely flinched.

On the shore Joshua has piled leaves that the female crocodile will use as she begins to build her nest in a few weeks. After her nest is built, she will monitor it carefully, adjusting the temperature for the 28-45 eggs that she will lay there. Until her babies are born, she will not eat, Joshua tells me.

Joshua is a humble man. Soft-spoken, contemplative. Joshua retired in December. A little over a month has passed, and he's resuming his old post today, Monday the 15th. I asked him what brought him back. "I'm waiting until they can train someone to replace me," he said, "Because we have to protect the environment in Palau, in the end that's all we've got."