25 de outubro de 2008


por Arturo Boyra
in http://www.oceanografica.com/tamboril/galeras/?album=1&gallery=14

Recientemente viajamos a las vecinas Islas Salvajes para estudiar la biodiversidad marina de este archipiélago con el fin de poder comparar el estado de los ecosistemas de los archipiélagos de Madeira, Salvajes y Canarias.

Salida del muelle de Funchal

Los archipiélagos de Madeira y Canarias se caracterizan por estar densamente poblados y, por tanto, sometidos a fuertes presiones de origen humano que han ocasionado la alteración de los recursos naturales. A 280 km al sur de Madeira y a 165 km al norte de Canarias, Las Islas Salvajes son un pequeño grupo formado por tres islas, Selvagen Grande (Salvaje Grande), Selvagen Pequeña (Pitón Grande) e Ilheu de Fora (La Salvajita) y una decena de bajas e islotes de duras condiciones climáticas y marinas, de ahí el nombre de “Salvajes”. Estas condiciones adversas no permitieron en el pasado el asentamiento definitivo de los colonos que intentaron vivir en ellas. Por ello, Las Salvajes pueden ser el reflejo del pasado de los ecosistemas marinos de Madeira y Canarias y, por tanto, el secreto para descubrir las alteraciones que el ser humano ha ocasionado en las comunidades naturales tanto de Madeira como de Canarias.

De los cinco archipiélagos que forma la Macaronesia (Azores, Madeira, Islas Salvajes, Canarias y Cabo Verde), las Salvajes son las segundas más antiguas con 28 millones de años, detrás de Cabo Verde. Diogo Gomes reclamó el descubrimiento de Las Salvajes como propio en 1438 tras su regreso de una expedición a Guinea pero existen referencias de este archipiélago en mapas de 1364 y ya en la antigüedad eran conocidas como Heres y Antoloba.

Las Islas Salvajes son parque natural desde 1971 (Decreto nº 458/71 del 29 de octubre de 1971) con el límite de la reserva establecido en la cota de los 200 m y siendo una de las reservas mas antiguas de Portugal. Para visitarlas o bucear en ellas es preciso contar con un permiso especial de la dirección de los Servicios de Parques Naturales de Madeira. Desde que se declaró reserva goza de la más alta figura de protección, lo que sumado a la lejanía a los dos archipiélagos más poblados y a la intensa vigilancia a la que están sometidas debido al litigio abierto entre España y Portugal por la soberanía de sus aguas, ha permitido que las presiones humanas sean mínimas durante un periodo mucho mayor que en ninguna de las islas vecinas. La Reserva Marina más antigua de Canarias, la de la isla del Hierro, por ejemplo, se estableció en 1996 y la de Garajau (Madeira) en 1986. Las presiones pesqueras se reducen a pequeñas incursiones furtivas esporádicas aunque en el pasado, con la aparición de los motores, no fueron pocos los pescadores que se acercaron a las Salvajes en busca de cuantiosas capturas. Las leyendas alrededor de tesoros piratas escondidos en las islas también suscitaron visitas de numerosos navegantes. En 1701 el pirata escocés William Kidd expolió las costas de Sudamérica y varios galeones españoles repletos de oro de Perú. Este tesoro fue escondido en algún lugar del Atlántico y numerosas expediciones han partido para las Salvajes en su busca. En 1921 el explorador inglés Sir Ernest Shackleton solicitó a los propietarios de la isla permiso para buscarlo contando incluso con credenciales de la marina inglesa asegurando que podía estar allí. Shackleton no pudo encontrar este tesoro, no porque no estuviese en Salvajes, sino porque murió ese mismo año en su última expedición intentando ser el primer hombre en llegar al polo sur. En 1971 World Wildlife Fund intento comprar la isla para protegerla por su valioso patrimonio natural pero fue el gobierno portugués quien lo hizo al final no sin antes firmar una cláusula por la cual los antiguos propietarios percibirían una parte del tesoro si algún día se encontraba.

Actualmente el mayor tesoro de las islas es bien conocido y el trabajo de Alec Zino y su hijo Franc Zino ha tenido mucho que ver, las increíbles poblaciones de aves marinas son, sin duda, el principal recurso patrimonial de estas islas y los antiguos isleños sabían cómo aprovecharlo. En el pasado, el aceite de pardela era muy preciado y su carne salada era la única fuente de proteínas que los isleños de las zonas rurales más pobres del interior podían adquirir en los mercados locales. Las partidas de caza a las islas llegaban a matar decenas de miles de animales en una sola temporada entre los meses de septiembre y octubre. En la actualidad, la colonia de pardelas cuenta con más de 30.000 parejas lo que la convierte en una de las más importantes del mundo para esta especie y en la principal del Atlántico. Sin embargo, la pardela no es la única ave abundante de este diminuto archipiélago, el paíño calcamar cuenta con más de 19.000 parejas (única colonia conocida en el Atlántico norte) y son cerca de 40 las especies de aves citadas convirtiendo a estos roques en un auténtico santuario para la avifauna.

Las islas fueron siempre un peligro para la navegación, de hecho el petrolero italiano “Cerno”, encallado en la costa norte de Salvaje Pequeña, así lo recuerda. Los nuevas tecnologías han permitido que dejen de suponer esa amenaza y que hoy podamos bucear en esos puntos singulares que sin GPS serían imposibles de localizar en un lugar donde no hay referencia posible para obtener marcas de tierra. Sin duda, las Salvajes esconden increíbles puntos de buceo y muchos de ellos están aún por descubrir. Ese era parte de nuestro trabajo.

Respecto a la expedición, estaba formada por personal del parque natural, el equipo de seguimiento de la avifauna liderado por el eminente ornitólogo Fran Zino, Pedro Q. Graça diputado del parlamento de Portugal que quería conocer el punto más al sur de Portugal, la directora de la Estación de Biología Marina de Funchal, Mafalda Freitas, responsable de la campaña científica e investigadora principal y el director de la agencia de divulgación canaria Oceanográfica, Arturo Boyra como buceador y fotógrafo científico. Durante la campaña, se realizaron muestreos submarinos para caracterizar las fondos de las Islas, poco conocidos y en su mayor parte inexplorados.

Los trabajos de investigación llevados a cabo en esta campaña en las tres islas Salvajes reflejan el buen estado de salud de los fondos de estas islas en comparación con Madeira y Canarias, por presentar tanto peces de grandes tallas, como abundantes ejemplares de especies emblemáticas como meros, medregales, gallos, abades o pejeperros. Los erizos que devastan los fondos rocosos de Canarias y Madeira no han conseguido colonizar estas pequeñas e inhóspitas islas muy presumiblemente debido a la cantidad de peces que albergan. Sin duda hemos encontrado un tesoro de vivos colores en estas islas pero es un tesoro que gracias a la labor de muchas personas podremos seguir disfrutando y conservando con empeño y duro esfuerzo.

Llamamos salvajes a unas islas que han logrado mantener intacto su patrimonio natural y no al ser humano que ha conseguido poner en peligro ese legado teniendo incluso que protejerlo de si mismo.


12 de outubro de 2008

AS ILHAS SELVAGENS - UM RETRATO

As Ilhas Selvagens são um pequeno arquipélago ou, para alguns autores, um subarquipélago português pertencente à Região Autónoma da Madeira.

Situam-se a 165 quilómetros a norte da arquipélago espanhol das Canárias, a 250 quilómetros ao sul da cidade do Funchal (Madeira), a cerca de 250 quilómetros a oeste da costa africana, a cerca de 1000 quilómetros a sudoeste do continente europeu

As Selvagens são constituídas por duas ilhas principais, várias ilhotas ou ilhéus e diversos  rochedos que, tal como quase todas as ilhas da Macaronésia, têm origem vulcânica. O arquipélago é um santuário para aves e tem uma área total de 273 hectares, dividindo-se em dois grupos. O grupo nordeste compreende a "Ilha Selvagem Grande" e duas pequenas ilhotas, "Palheiro da Terra" e "Palheiro do Mar". 

O grupo sudeste compreende a "Ilha Selvagem Pequena" e o "Ilhéu de Fora" entre numeroso ilhéus mais pequenos que incluem o "Alto", o "Comprido", o "Redondo" e o pequeno grupo dos "Ilhéus do Norte". Uma extensa barreira de recifes circundam o arquipélago, dificultando  a ancoragem nas costas das ilhas.

As ilhas Selvagem Grande e a Selvagem Pequena distam 15 quilómetros uma da outra. 

As Ilhas Selvagens foram oficialmente descobertas em 1438 por Diogo Gomes de Sintra  e dependem administrativamente do concelho do Funchal. 

Contrariamente ao que é afirmado, de forma enganosa, em vários sitios da Internet, as Ilhas Selvagens não são desabitadas, nem nunca foram "desertas" de habitantes, já que a Selvagem Grande é habitada em permanência e durante todo o ano por dois vigilantes do  Parque Natural da Madeira, sendo também visitada periodicamente por pessoal da Armada Portuguesa ao serviço da Direcção-Geral de Faróis. Nela reside igualmente, durante largas temporadas do ano, a família Zino, proprietária da única casa particular da ilha. 

Existe, para além desta, na Selvagem Grande, a casa dos vigilantes do PNM e uma terceira casa, que serve como armazém, pertença de um particular.

A Selvagem Pequena é habitada durante parte do ano por dois vigilantes.

A polémica relativamente à soberania portuguesa sobre as Selvagens não tem qualquer fundamento legal já que Portugal não só as descobriu como tem tido a sua posse, de jure e de facto, durante séculos. Esta minha afirmação será cabalmente demonstrada, nomeadamente através de prova documental, aquando da futura  publicação da minha tese de doutoramento sobre o regime jurídico das Ilhas Selvagens no direito internacional.

Já no que respeita à alegada pretensão do Reino de Espanha no que diz respeito à delimitação da Zona Económica Exclusiva (200 milhas náuticas) das Selvagens,e a consideração de que estas devem ser consideradas como rochedos e não como ilhas, aqui a divergência existe na realidade e tem levado a que, ao longo das décadas, as Selvagens tenham vindo a ser vítimas de violações do seu espaço marítimo e aéreo, nomeadamente através de pescadores e aeronaves militares, alegadamente espanholas. Tudo tem a ver com a questão da classificação das Selvagens como "ilhas" ou, ao invés, como defende Espanha, como meros "rochedos", com a consequente atribuição de diferentes espaços marítimos de acordo com a Convenção de Montego Bay.

As ilhas já receberam visitas oficiais de dois presidentes da República Portuguesa, Mário Soares e Jorge Sampaio, actos de soberania que visaram reforçar a identidade e solidariedade nacionais e evidenciar o seu estatuto como reserva natural nacional. 

A Reserva Natural das Ilhas Selvagens (que integra o Parque Natural da Madeira) foi criada em 1971, sendo uma das mais antigas reservas naturais de Portugal. Actualmente é a única reserva portuguesa galardoada com o Diploma Europeu do Conselho da Europa.

As Selvagens encontram-se sob gestão do Parque Natural da Madeira desde 1989 e são um dos melhores exemplos de áreas protegidas vigiadas continuamente em Portugal.

Obs – Texto inspirado na Wikipédia mas corrigido pelo autor deste blog já que o texto apresentado não era totalmente correcto. O gráfico é o constante da Wikipédia portuguesa. 

11 de outubro de 2008

Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460

Treasure Island

CAPITÃO KIDD, cujo tesouro se diz estar escondido nas Selvagens no "The Pirates' Who's Who"

William Kidd (22 de janeiro de 1645 - 23 de maio de 1701), corsário inglês, mais conhecido por Capitão Kidd. Recebeu ordens da Inglaterra para controlar a pirataria francesa na região de Madagascar.

Nasceu por volta de 1645 na Escócia, possivelmente em Greenock. Foi levado para o mar quase menino e emigrou para a América do Norte. No ano de 1690 morava em Nova Iorque. Possuiu seu próprio navio mercante e distinguiu-se como capitão a serviço do Rei da Inglaterra contra a França em 1689 nas Índias Ocidentais Francesas. Enriqueceu rapidamente, e era bem casado com uma viúva inglesa, Sarah Oort que possuía duas propriedades herdadas dos dois maridos anteriores a ele. Foi introduzido na políticas e conheceu o coronel Benjamim Fletcher, Governador de Nova Iorque, conhecido pelos envolvimentos comerciais com piratas. Para terminar com a pirataria na costa, o Rei nomeou o governador o Lord Bellmont. O capitão Kidd estava em Londres em 1695 com seu navio "Antigua".

Em Nova Iorque Robert Livingston propôs-lhe o negócio de capturar os piratas e os saques. Lorde Bellmont estava na residência de Londres e, como convidado estava Willian Kidd, tendo-o apresentado a pessoas influentes que poderiam financiar a campanha. Eles entraram deste modo em contacto com o amigo próximo do Rei, Sir John Sommers, o Duque e Chanceler de Shresbury, o Secretário de Estado Sir Edward Russell, Lord de Oxford, e o Conde Rommey. 

Os bens capturados seriam divididos nas seguintes proporções: 10 por cento eram para a Coroa, 60 por cento para os financiadores do governador de nova Yorque Bellmont, permanecendo 15 por cento para Livingston e Kidd e 15 por cento para a tripulação. Na altura foi entregue a Kidd uma patente de Corsário que o autorizava a capturar bens que pertenciam aos inimigos franceses. A coroa também lhe recomendou a missão de capturar piratas, navios e bens com a advertência a de não aborrecer os amigos e aliados. William Kidd tentou abandonar a companha no começo mas foi pressionado a não o fazer pelos seus mais influentes financiadores. Kidd teve de vender seu navio o “Antigua” para contribuir com sua parte nas despesas da campanha e comprou o navio "The Adventure Galley ". Levou na sua tripulação homens com famílias como precaução para que eles não tivessem a tentação de se dedicarem à pirataria. O primeiro incidente infeliz aconteceu quando não cumprimentaram um navio da Marinha Inglesa, procedeimento obrigatório para todos os navios que entravam e saiam de um porto. Uma fragata fez fogo contra o navio de Kidd e a tripulação do barco, como sinal de desrespeito, mostrou os traseiros para os marinheiros da Fragata. O navio de Kidd vou então a sua tripulação trocada por marujos à margem da lei.

Kidd voltou a Nova Iorque e recrutou o resto da tripulação entre homens em situação desesperada. Depois de um ano no mar nem não tinha conseguido uma só presa e a campanha que havia começado a desenvolver passoua ser dedicada à pirataria. Em abril de 1697 ancorou no mar Vermelho à espera de que passasse algum navio francês ou pirata. Depois de uma espera de três semanas Kidd atacou um navio mercantil mouro, o "Espectro" navio sob o comando do capitão Barlow que fazia a escolta à frota mercante. Este estava com o pavilhão inglês e atirou na "Galera de Aventura" rechaçando o ataque. Quando Edward Barlow chegou a Karwar em 14 de Outubro descreveu Willian Kidd no seu relatório como tendo se transformado em pirata. Em Novembro Kidd teve que ameaçar sua tripulação para evitar um motim. Um navio mercante apareceu com bandeira inglesa os piratas quiseram abordá-lo. Num confronto com William Moore, Kidd agrdiu-ocom um cubo na cabeça e Moore morreu no dia seguinte. O primeiro saque de Kidd foi dois anos depois. com o "Maiden" um navio árabe rebaptizado "Novembro". Kidd pensou que tinha trabalhado dentro da lei porque o capitão holandês tinha mostrado passagens francesas. Mais tarde, no Natal de 1697 Kidd capturou um navio árabe que tinha partido de Malabar e um navio português com produtos das Índias Orientais. No dia 30 de Janeiro de 1698 capturou o "Quedah Merchant" capitaneado por um inglês chamado Wright. 

A tripulação recusou-se devolver o navio quando foi descoberta sua verdadeira identidade. Treze membros da tripulação deserdaram em Culliford, incluído Robert Bradinham e Joseph Palmer que testemunharam contra Kidd na tentativa de se salvarem. A tripulação queimou o navio “Novembro” e prenderam Kidd no seu camarote. Depois da rendição de Kidd, esvaziaram o “Adventure Galley” que apresentou entradas perigosas de água. Permaneceram no “Quedah Merchante”, recrutaram alguns tripulantes novos e voltaram para casa com o saque. Uma frota inglesa tinha sido enviada para sua captura. O perdão que foi oferecido a todos os piratas, excluía Kidd e outros dois. Depois de três anos no mar, Bellmont voltou com sua esposa e as filhas e o governador foi encarcerado na prisão de Stone. Em março de 1701 apareceu na Câmara dos Comuns que recomendou que fosse levado ao Tribunal do Almirantado em 8 de Maio. Não foi permitido a ninguém testemunhar a favor deles. A primeira sentença recebida foi a de culpado pelo assassinato de William Moore. Kidd, na segunda sentença foi condenado por pirataria e condenadoa ser pendurado.O seu corpo permaneceu pendurado até apodrecer à beira do rio Tamisa, como advertência a todos os piratas.

Diz a lenda que Kidd terá guardado o seu imenso tesouro nas Ilhas Selvagens existindo na ilha uma gruta com a designação de gruta do Capitão Kidd.

Obs - Texto com base na Wikipédia.

The Pirates Own Book

Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period

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CRIATURAS MISTERIOSAS

5 de outubro de 2008

“ISLOMANIA” or my madness for islands

Cheyenne Morrison © 2007

 

īl-o-mā'nē-āk' - One with a madness for islands

 

“Those who suffer from [islomania] can be recognized by the faraway look in their eyes, their horror of enclosed spaces and their lust for certain colors, such as royal blue with depths upon depths of gold in it, which can only be seen in the Aegean and along the coasts of Greece.”

Robert Payne, The Isles of Greece Simon & Schuster 65

Do you daydream about tropical islands, graced by drooping palm trees, surrounded by turquoise lagoons, where you can lie in a hammock and do absolutely nothing except drink a Mai Tai and watch the waves ripple on the sugar white beach?  If so, then you suffer from a medical condition called Islomania (pronounced 'i-lo-ma-ne-a') or an obsession with islands.

Many people since the beginning of time have dreamed of living on an island, perhaps for just a few days, or a month, a year or even forever. But it was the poet, writer, traveller and island lover Lawrence Durrell who first made famous the term “Islomaniac”. In 1956 he wrote at the beginning of Reflections on a Marine Venus…

"Somewhere among the notebooks of Gideon I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. These are people, Gideon used to say, by way of explanation, who find islands somehow irresistible. We islomanes, says Gideon, are the direct descendants of the Atlanteans, and it is toward the lost Atlantis that our subconscious is drawn. This means that we find islands irresistible.”  

In a letter to a friend he wrote… "Islomania is a rare affliction of spirit.  There are people who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are in a little world surrounded by sea fills them with an indescribable intoxication.” 

Only another islomaniac could understand the power islands can exert on the mind and heart of man, the way they can stir up feelings of love, contentment and belonging. Lawrence Durrell notes that a man named Kimon Friar claimed to have lived on 46 different islands. Philip Conkling has apparently visited more islands than anyone else. The director of Maine's Island Institute, he has been to about 1,000 islands in that state. Some people in the Travelers' Century Club, whose members attempt to visit as many countries as possible, have been to islands in over 100 countries.

I’m undoubtedly an islomaniac, almost all islands are beautiful to me, and very few are lacking in interest. I personally know of no greater joy in life than to get my first sight, in the half-light of an early dawn, of an island looming off the bow of a boat. If it is an unknown island, better still. Life on an island is simple and satisfying - if you are the right kind of person for it. But if you cannot do without all the small conveniences of life the modern age has given us, don’t go. If you’re the kind who must have the morning and evening paper, a cinema round the corner, your favourite show on the TV, and all the other mundanities of urban life, stay at home. But if you are the sort who craves adventure and new experiences, you will find in islands a happiness that is inexpressible, something real and vital that you will never forget as long as you live.

The dictionary defines island as “land surrounded by water”, but no island-lover would ever allow such a commonplace description to detract from the romantic sound of the word and all that it conveys to the imagination. Islands, like emerald yachts on a powdered sapphire sea, are places of magic, for there is something unpredictable about an island. The water which isolates it from the main-land cuts it off at the same time from the banality of everyday life, so that anything may happen on an island; the laws of probability have no jurisdiction there. Avalon, Hy-brasil, Lyonnesse, Atlantis, they offer the dream of a Utopian, Shangri La existence.

Islanders are renowned for being anarchic, and insular - from the Latin Insula - island, and being insular they attract eccentrics. Islands are the natural repository of witches, monsters, hermits, castaways, beachcombers, artists, writers, exiles, expatriates, the fabulously wealthy, pirates and buried treasure, they are even home to the gods. They are the setting for both Heaven and Hell; the island of Vulcan, was home to the Greek god of fire Haephestos, and purported to be the entrance to hell. The Maldives were claimed to be the original setting of the Garden of Eden by General Gordon of Khartoum fame, and Sri Lanka was thought by the Arabs to be the site of Eden, with Adam's footprint on the summit.

An island, like the Garden of Eden, is a finite, concentrated world, complete in itself and whose boundaries are fixed. Being small and circumscribed by water, islands can be imagined as a magic circle, both encompassing and including, offering protection and exclusion. Because of this islands are easily explored, which gives the illusion that they can be conquered and thus they possess the imagination. Islands are the world on a human scale, the boundaries of the island encourage us to think we can get to truly know it, and they are easily imagined as a map. Local events are magnified into world history since it is a miniature, a model of, and a model for, the wider world, but one more open to observation and personal control than the whole atlas. Limited in size and isolated, islands provide security and protection from the unsavoury aspect of reality.

Islands, I think, are metaphors for ourselves: they are part of a larger whole, but separated from it, too. That larger whole sustains them, and they contribute their small piece to it. But they are also worlds unto themselves, with well-defined boundaries. Each island is like ourselves: unique. And like each of us, each one is surrounded by elements that can be delightful one day and destructive the next.

Only a true island-lover can appreciate to the full the fascination of standing upon land surrounded on all sides by a glittering girdle of water; but every child is an island-lover. How is easy it is for children to create an island, their appeal to children lies in the sense of safety and security they provide, because an island encloses but also secludes like a magic circle. Children can turn anything into an imaginary island, a cardboard box, a tree house, underneath a bed, the imaginary island provides safety and isolation, like a womb. Perhaps it's this simple concept, most appealing to children, which is the largest factor adults seek islands as places of refuge from the realities of the world, a place where you can create your own reality.

It was as a child that I became obsessed with Islands, and a single book is responsible. A book absorbed in childhood can give a lifelong colour to the soul; as Thoreau said in Walden (1854) “how many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book”.

The critical moment for me was when my Grandmother gave me an illustrated copy of Robinson Crusoe. That simple, comic book version of one of the world’s greatest pieces of literature opened the doors of creation to me, tempering my imagination. I could see, hear and touch every part of Crusoe’s island, it possessed my dreams and gave birth to a life-long obsession. By the age of ten I knew my life’s purpose, to live on a desert isle and escape from civilization, where I could be safe from all the problems of an unhappy childhood.

The second turning point in my life was when I was given a colour photography book of Captain Cook's explorations for my 12th birthday. Filled with beautiful drawings, maps, and photos of tropical islands and South Sea islanders, the book made me realise that in my escape to an island, I had been looking to close to home. If there were an Island Paradise, then it had to have Palm trees, sandy beaches and exotic cultures.

Now when was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America or Africa or Australia, and lose myself in all glories of exploration.  At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one look particularly inviting on a map (but they all look like that) I would put my finger on and say “When I grow up I will go there.” Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

While other children were fascinated with the normal pursuits of children like sport or comics, my greatest pleasure like Conrad was to be left alone with an atlas. I pored over maps of Polynesia, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean until I was more familiar with them than my own neighborhood. I remember well the day I first learnt the word Archipelago, how magic the connotations of that word to me; a collection of islands, what joy that thought bought to me.

As a teenager, and my passion for islands grew, I read anything I could lay my hands on about voyages and exploration, Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Captain Cook, I knew each island they visited, pictured their expeditions in my mind, and their accounts of islands only continued to fertilise a love I already possessed. I knew intimately and by heart the Tuamotus, the Maldives, The Caribbean and the Fiji Islands; any explorer could happily rely on my skills as an island navigator.

Scouring libraries for island tales, I found that I was not alone in my passion: I found that many great writers were as obsessed with islands as I was. The 19th century saw many writers head to the South Seas, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke and Jack London.

“Awfully nice man here tonight… telling us all about the South Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there; beautiful places, green forever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but study oratory and etiquette, sit in the sun and pick up the fruits as they fall.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Private letter of spring 1875

Gauguin writing to his patron in September 1901, knowing he was dying, explained why he had chosen Hiva Oa as the place to end his life.

It is an island, still almost cannibalistic. I think the savage element there, together with complete solitude, will revive the fire of my enthusiasm before I die, give new life to my imagination and bring my talents to a fitting conclusion.”

Then, in the aftermath of World War I, the South Pacific again attracted a host of writing talent in search of a simpler world. Americans James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Robert Dean Frisbie, and Frederick O'Brien, in particular, wrote numerous short stories and serials about Polynesia which provided a literary foundation for the well-known South Pacific stories written after WWII by James Michener, W. Somerset Maugham and others. 

I devoured the works of these island lovers, but even that didn’t satisfy my appetite; my fascination grew from the islands of imagination, to those of reality. I well remember the day when we happened upon a garage sale where there seemed to be a veritable mountain of National Geographic magazines. I kept my whole family bored for hours while I dug through the pile sorting out only those that dealt with islands, and those two boxes of old magazines kept me dreaming for many years. Years later when were cleaning house I had to throw them out and it was almost like losing a part of the family. My only compensation being that I knew every single one by heart, and every map and photos was permanently engraved in my memory.

Thus it was that islands became my passion, my idee fixé. As I grew older I ransacked libraries for books on real islands, the more desolate and remote the better. It was always the little islands I loved the best, when looking at a map I was always looking in the corners at tiny islands with no name. Even though Australia, my home, is an island it carried no fascination for me, it was far too large. Norfolk, Lord Howe, Cocos Keeling, even the islands of the Antarctic, those had the possibilities I sought, adventure, solitude and escape.

All my life I have been an escapist. Whenever I get the chance I flee normal life to some “ivory tower” an island of fiction, and if possible one of reality. I wanted to be anywhere apart from the mind-numbing suburbia in which I felt trapped and constricted by the small minds and smaller aspirations of those surrounding me. If faced with a choice of a high-paying office job, or a poorly paid job as a deckhand or cook on a ship, there was no choice involved for me. Some people who’ve met me and discovered my passion and lifestyle would sneer deprecatingly at what they termed my “rolling-stone life”. It didn’t worry me, car payments, a mortgage, commuting two hours a day on public transport, to work in the city, surrounded by concrete, grey faces and grey lives - for what? - the very idea sickens me.

The beachcomber, that most clichéd of island inhabitants, was often depicted in literature as drunken, useless wastrel; the dregs of western society. But upon reading the books of Rupert Brooke, Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham and all the other writers I loved who used beachcombers as characters to satirize “Normal” society, I realized that my greatest ambition was to become a beachcomber.

To live on some remote and untouched tropical island, with maybe a bar or a trading schooner for income, to marry some brown-skinned island beauty and raise a brood of kids and lie there in a hammock in the evenings, sipping a Mai Tai and watching the sunset, that’s my dream. Sounds simple, but I’ve spent half my life at 44 years of age and I’m yet to achieve it. 

My life has often been tough, and at times desperate, but I know it’s been worth it for I have memories and experiences that few men on earth are lucky enough to experience. The quote, which most sums up my feelings comes from the writer James Norman Hall. After spending several months on a schooner wandering the remote Tuamotu islands of French Polynesia, he came across another ship anchored in a small atoll whose captain gave him a pile of recent newspapers from Tahiti. Hall read the papers that evening, then wrote in his notebook:

 ". . . I heard as in a dream the far-off clamor of the outside world . . . but there was no reality, no allurement in the sound. I saw men carrying trivial burdens with an air of immense effort, of grotesque self-importance; scurrying in breathless haste on useless errands, gorging food without relish; sleeping without refreshment; taking their leisure without enjoyment; living without the knowledge of content; dying without ever having lived. . . ."

These words struck me as timeless and more valid now than when Hall wrote them nearly eighty years ago. I've experienced enough 'trivial burdens' and 'useless errands' in mundane jobs, and this single paragraph described a view of life that was uncannily familiar. Hall's nightmare can all too easily become your reality, if you let it. Conventional life with its fictitious scale of values was what I fled: what I escaped “to” is more difficult to explain. However, anyone who shares my dream of islands hardly requires any further explanations.

There is a long history of two opposing images represented by islands in literature and the public imagination, and this dichotomy seems to stems from our attempts to anthropomorphize islands. They are a blank canvas on which are written our hopes and fears.

Islands also are the emblematic archetypal image for loneliness, epitomized by the castaway washed up on a desert island. Since Daniel Defoe’s epic tale “Robinson Crusoe” castaways and islands have become synonymous. The desert island is seen as a place where separated from society and its accoutrements man eventually reverts to his savage nature. This was most effectively portrayed in William Golding’s classic ‘The Lord of the Flies”, which was turned into two movie versions. The long literary tradition of island castaways was utilized by Hollywood, at first with movies based on classic books, but this eventually led to the start of reality television. The first and most famous reality TV show CBS’s ‘Survivor’ was actually based on a Swedish show called ‘Expedition Robinson’, and the genre continues with the present success of TV’s ‘Lost’. Lost itself borrows from a variety of sources in the castaway genre, and the island theme allows us an avenue to look into the human psyche and ask ourselves how we would behave if we were trapped on an island.

While nowadays a tropical island is most people’s idea of an ideal holiday destination, many of the places that we now seek to see as Paradise were once places of suffering and banishment. Alcatraz, Robbin’s Island, Devils’ Island, Monte Christo, Norfolk Island, and the Andaman’s all bring to mind tales of horror and hardship. In the 19th century tropical islands were seen as remote backwaters, where condemned criminals, failed bureaucrats and society’s misfits were exiled. To us this now seems incomprehensible.

Islands have also long symbolized Paradise, the ancient Greek version of Paradise was the Elysian Fields, a group of hundreds of island were the worthy lived in absolute happiness. From Plato’s story of Atlantis to Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Island’ there is a long literary tradition of islands being the perfect setting for Utopian dreams. Even the word Utopia stems from the fictional island invented by Sir Thomas Moore.

In the modern world islands have become the universal symbol for escape, one can hardly walk down any main street without seeing pictures of Fiji, the Maldives or the Seychelles used as seductive flypaper by travel agencies. Such images epitomize the desire to escape city life and return to a simpler place, in harmony with nature. The offer the appeal of allowing use to surrender ourselves to nature, but in a controlled method and all the trimmings so once we have absorbed them we can return to society reinvigorated.

Isolation has ceased to be a form of deprivation. In the world of mass travel, mobile phones, faxes and email, isolation is the scarcest commodity. With the advent of the jet, there’s hardly a spot on the globe which remains unexplored or untouched. Tourism has become one of the largest industries in the world, and more and more tourists compete for a limited amount of islands. Part of the power of islands is that, like Paradise, they can exclude. The harder to get to, the more it is worth going there. Wherever you travel to nowadays it is not the main island itself that is the star prize. It is that smaller island just out of reach: Maui, Bora Bora, Aitutaki or Turtle island.

In Alex Garland’s novel “The Beach” later turned into a film starring Leonardo di Caprio, we find backpackers always questing to find the latest, newest, “undiscovered” island, more remote from their peers, where they can experience the island idyll. Yet, their desire to experience a remote tropical island is exactly what ends up destroying it. Islands embody our deepest assumptions about Nature, they are good Nature, the sort that has to be preserved and cherished so they remain part of a benevolent world. Their isolation confers the hope of the discovery of the unsullied virginity of Nature but it also makes them vulnerable. So on islands we are immediately in the doublebind of being tourists in a place that should be beyond tourism. The response is twofold: ecotourism that makes Man servant of the environment, or offshore tourism where he seeks to go one step beyond.

I longed all my life to flee to an island where I could escape urbanity and all its ills. Sadly, there are no island refuges left, there is no spot on the globe where we can flee pollution, our disregard for our planet now threatens the very air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat. An island is a microcosm, the Earth in miniature. As a sailor for many years I visited many remote tropical islands. I was deeply traumatised when upon reaching Oeno atoll, one of the most remote islands in the world (which I assumed would be pristine) to find the beaches covered in the worst detritus of our modern world. Plastic flip-flops, plastic bags and bottles, and the ubiquitous cigarette butts. Even this fragile and stunning island paradise had fallen foul of our carelessness about the environment. To me it was like finding the Mona Lisa covered in graffiti, and the memory of that still provokes me to this day.

Castaways on desert islands, who learnt to live in harmony with themselves, their comrades and most importantly, nature, ultimately survived. Those that chose to go against nature, fight amongst themselves, and couldn’t resign themselves to a different way of thought perished. Many are the examples of islands where Europeans have introduced foreign plants and animals, which have gone on to totally destroy the environment. Our world is an island, and is just as fragile, if we don’t learn from the destruction of those islands, and alter our rape and destruction of the Earth we will shortly be left with nowhere to live whatsoever. The West's pursuit of a materialistic lifestyle has made the very sun itself a danger, and Global Warming threatens to drown those islands we call Paradise. I wonder, will my grandchildren be able to enjoy islands like me? or will they only be distant memories, something to read about in history books?

 When the Astronauts first set foot on the moon 30 years ago we were shown that first, extraordinarily powerful photo of the Earth taken from space. By seeing the Earth in its totality, enclosed, finite and very small, our thinking underwent a total paradigm shift. Our world was no longer the pre-Copernican centre of the universe we had thought it before. For the first time in history we saw the Earth for what it really was. That fragile, tiny, achingly beautiful blue-and-white-swirling marble peeking over the horizon of the moon, was alone, cut-off, and mysterious. The whole Earth had become no more than a desert island in the icy depths of the infinite black ocean of space. That photo proved that we had all become islanders, and like castaways trapped on an island we need to co-operate, or ultimately we will perish.

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