Day 136 Relaxing

Suwarrow Island
This is one of the most relaxing places we have visited. There are no stores, no city, no distractions and very few people. The water and the air are warm but not hot and a pleasant breeze blows from the sea. There are hammocks on the island that are a perfect place to sit and read a book so Mark, Kurt and Andy left in mid-morning to do just that. I stayed behind to catch up on some chores and to do some snorkeling.
Like most of the islands in the Pacific, Suwarrow is ringed with a coral reef such that there is a lagoon where the original volcano was. In addition, the motus or islands that remain are themselves fringed with coral so that getting from the lagoon to the island requires finding an opening in the "fringing reef". In most of the places we have been, the snorkeling spots are on the lagoon side of the outer or barrier reef, on passes through the barrier reef or on the fringing reef around the motus. Only in Rangiroa when I was scuba diving did I go on the ocean side of the barrier reef. Because we were deep, we avoided the waves that break on the ocean side of the reef.
In Mo'orea I snorkeled along the fringing reef and found it to be full of colorful coral and interesting fish. Here is Suwarrow, there were only the fish. The coral was all grey and had no color indicating that the living organisms had all died. There are various explanations given for this - all of them having to do with water temperature. The first and most easily linked in time to the supposed cause is El niño. In 1983 and in 1997 there were unusually warm water temperatures in the South Pacific caused by the bank of warm water that "sloshes" between Asia to America. The "bleaching" of the coral was noted directly thereafter. Theory has it that coral is very sensitive to temperature and dies if the water is too warm.
The second theory for death of the coral is, of course, global warming. The El niño effect appears to have a very specific time window - El niño one year and dead coral the next - whereas I have not seen any similar reports that link global warming as directly. One clear effect that global warming will have on these islands is to make the low ones disappear. Certainly the atolls we visited in the Tuomotus will be very different places if the sea rises even one foot.
Needless to say, the snorkeling was a bit disappointing although there were some very beautiful and colorful reef fish. The big yellow and black angel fish are always a treat as are the tangerine colored little guys that peck away at the coral. On this reef there were also some larger fish that I had not seen before including the amazingly colored green and purple parrot fish and several kinds of grouper and wraise. I saw no sharks during my long swim and I am just as happy that I did not. I don't mind seeing them when there are several people in the water but I am not as comfortable when I am alone.
We ended the day with a game of water polo where we were joined by people from several other yachts. It is easy to get folks to join this, if for no other reason than it is an excuse to get off the boat and get a little exercise. Cruising can be very sedentary as there is no where to go for exercise while underway so a good vigorous swim in an anchorage is very inviting.