To chile, easter island, and rarotonga - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 180

The history of the island from the arrival of the original Polynesian
inhabitants (around A.D. 400) until 1722 reads like an ominous warn-
ing. When first colonized by humans, life on the island must have been
good and food plentiful. The people thrived and the population grew
to an estimated ten thousand. Things did not remain peaceful, how-
ever. Competition between tribes grew fierce, with the creation of the
giant carved heads becoming a form of rivalry. The already decimated
forests were cleared for logs to roll the massive stone heads from where
they were carved to their chosen resting places several miles away.
With the forest gone, the climate changed and food became scarce.
War and fighting were now the way of life, and the population declined
drastically. The once-productive island was changed forever. It struck
me that the history of this tiny island is a microcosm of what's hap-
pening in our world today. I only hope that we can recognize and con-
trol our destiny before we, too, follow the path taken by the coloniz-
ers of Rapa Nui. It must have been far from pleasant.
The message seems clear. If ten thousand people can do that to one
island, what will six billion— or more—do to our island in space, Earth?
The similarities are striking. Just as on Easter Island, our renewable re-
sources are being used up faster than they're being replenished, food is
becoming scarce in many parts of the world, forests are being cut down,
climates are changing, and there's competition among the “tribes.” The
big question is: Will we be able to stop before our “last tree” is destroyed?
Scuba air was not available here, but I'd brought my fins and mask
and was able to snorkel at several spots around the island. I was struck
by how sparse the marine life was, both in the variety of species and
in total numbers. The island, which drops o¤ steeply into the sur-
rounding deep sea and has no coral reefs, stands in clean oceanic water
that is poor in nutrients and plankton; as a result, productivity is very
poor. It must be very di‹cult for the islanders to live o¤ the sea.
SPECTACULAR TAHITI
I left Rapa Nui on the twice-weekly Lan-Chile flight to Tahiti, having
arranged to stay at the home of an American scuba-diving fish collec-
tor. Using what little French I remembered from my school years back