Gadling http://www.gadling.com Gadling http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.gadling.com/media/feedlogo.gif Gadling http://www.gadling.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Conservation International on the Galapagos Islands]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/17/bowermasters-adventures-conservation-international-on-the-ga/http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/17/bowermasters-adventures-conservation-international-on-the-ga/http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/17/bowermasters-adventures-conservation-international-on-the-ga/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,



Fernando Ortiz grew up on mainland Ecuador and has lived in the Galapagos the past twenty years. His career path has led him from tour guide to dive guide and eventually dive company manager. Along the route he decided that talking to tourists about conservation was not enough, so he made the leap to fulltime environmentalist. Today he runs Conservation International's office in Puerto Ayora. We talk on the town's main dock, Zodiac's whipping back and forth behind us overloaded with tourists, bags of cement, cases of water and beer, two-by-fours and cement blocks, frozen chickens and everything else needed to run a community of 40,000 on an island separated from the mainland by six hundred miles.

"I have realized a few things in the last few years regarding how best to preserve the Galapagos, primarily that it doesn't matter how good your technical arguments or human arguments are, it's not about that. It's mostly, and unfortunately, all about economics and politics.

"I try not to be critical to tourism as an economy. In fact, if we analyze it in one way, tourism is probably the best way in which nature can pay in cash for its survival. If I were to go back to the islands as I saw them for the first time, nineteen years ago, I would probably find the same biologic, ecologic and evolutionary processes still happening, the same blue-footed boobies still nesting on the same trails. The same for the sea lions and penguins. Tourism has actually been well controlled, despite its growth. It's the indirect impacts of tourism that we need to control.



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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Conservation International on the Galapagos Islands originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>bowermasterbowermastersadventuresgalapagosgalapagos islandsGalapagosIslandsislandjon bowermasterJonBowermasternational geographicNationalGeographicTue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Tourism's impact on the Galapagos]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/10/bowermasters-adventures-tourisms-impact-in-the-galapagos/http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/10/bowermasters-adventures-tourisms-impact-in-the-galapagos/http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/10/bowermasters-adventures-tourisms-impact-in-the-galapagos/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,



It would be wrong on its face to say that tourism is the biggest problem facing the Galapagos today. Simultaneously, it is accurate to say that the growth in tourism in the one-of-a-kind archipelago is the primary reason the islands are "in danger." Those are not my words, but UNESCO's, in 2007 ... the same year Ecuador's new president claimed the islands were at "great risk" and signed a decree making their protection a national priority. You get the sense that just defining the exact problem facing the Galapagos, for both locals and outsiders, is tricky.

With ninety seven percent of the islands off-limits and under national park protection - small, guided tours limited to 60 designated sites - the system that introduces tourists to the nineteen Galapagos islands has long been regarded a model of eco-tourism. But the success of that model is what puts them at such risk today: In 1991 there were 41,000 visitors, this year there will be close to 200,000; during that same period human population has risen from a few thousand to 40,000. Those are a lot of combined footsteps - as well as ship and plane traffic -- for such a fragile eco-system (the so-called "Mona Lisa of biodiversity").

The sudden arrival of so many people from so many parts of the world introduces parasites which threaten both flora and fauna; permanent residents arrive desirous of re-creating their mainland lifestyles, including cars, dogs and cats, and air conditioning; tour operators are pushing to expand their offerings to include sport fishing and skydiving. The Ecuadorian government has tried, with limited success, to limit migration and is considering raising the national park fee paid by every tourist from $100 to $135, an attempt to slow the numbers.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Tourism's impact on the Galapagos originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While in the Galapagos filming we ran into an American writer living in Puerto Ayora, the big town on the island of Santa Cruz, researching a book about exactly the same subject of our film - the current state of affairs across the archipelago.

Carol Ann Bassett's book is just out, published by National Geographic, fittingly titled "Galapagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists and Creationists Battle for Darwin's Cradle of Evolution," and it's a fantastic tutorial for anyone curious about the natural and human health of the island state today.

I was particularly curious about her reportage on Darwin's initial reaction to the islands that will forever be linked with his theory of evolution.

Like other biographers of Darwin - who first visited in 1835 as a curious but inexperienced 26-year-old, born the same day as Abraham Lincoln - she labels his role as evolutionary mystery solver as "one of the greatest myths of the history of science." Citing a study by Harvard professor and MacArthur Foundation "genius" Frank Sulloway, the book details how little Darwin actually took away from the Galapagos after his five-week visit. He had "no eureka flashes of enlightenment," she writes, "it would take decades before his final theory transcended his religious beliefs and his enduring doubts."

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- The Charles Darwin Research Center originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Often by the time the mainstream media runs big stories about an environmental battle it's often too late. I've seen it up-close dozens of times during the past couple decades and have reported so many David-versus-Goliath stories - usually positing good-hearted indigenous peoples and international environmental groups against greedy, monolithic utility companies and strong-arming government agents - that the stories have almost become fill-in-the-blanks. (Just change the name of the indigenous tribe, the utility company and the country and the story - and outcome - are usually very similar.)
Yet despite ominous recent headlines in the Wall Street Journal ("Galapagos Under Siege"), the Times ("Can Darwin's Lab Survive Success?") and UK's Independent ("Tourism, Over-Population and Overfishing Have Become the Blight of the Galapagos"), I happen to believe that the Ecuadorian archipelago will survive (even if more and more of its endemic creatures may not) and flourish. In some respects, as the standard bearer for the planet's evolutionary history, it simply must. As Alex Hearn, a marine biologist with the Charles Darwin Research Center on Santa Cruz Island told us about the Galapagos future, "if we can't get it right here, where can we?" A microcosm of the planet's wildlife, if the Galapagos loses its wildness it will feel like the end is near for the rest of our wild places.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Welcome to the Galapagos! originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We sailed into Kodiak on a somewhat rarified day for this part of the world, one filled with sunshine rather than rain. The weekend just past had been its annual Crab Fest, an event dampened by typical summer weather: horizontal rain and temperatures just above freezing. But on a big, blue, sun-shiny day you'd be hard-pressed to imagine a more beautiful place, the entirety of Kodiak Island and the snowcapped mountains that rim it wrapped beneath an indigo blue sky.

Ironically, the place it reminded me of most of was Kamchatka, where we'd been a week before. Both are spectacular lands of active volcanoes and hot, spurting geysers. The seas that surround both are the same steel-blue, the volcanic mountain ranges similarly tall and foreboding, with fishing boats moving in and out of the bays. Both regions share physical turmoil as well as beauty, visited frequently by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunami waves. Rain is a constant for both (Kamchatka, 110 inches a year, Kodiak, 68).

Though separated by one thousand miles of Bering Sea they started out with similar human roots as well. The very first Russian colony in North America was founded in 1784 at Three Saints Bay on southeastern Kodiak Island and until 1804 it was the center of Russian activity in Alaska. Russians are responsible for the name "Alaska," derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed."

Gallery: Kamchatka

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Kamchatka v. Kodiak, What a Difference 225 Years Makes originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Birthplace of the Winds, 10 Years After

During the past decade I've been to Dutch Harbor on the island of Unalaska - one of America's last frontiers, potentially the planet's next Singapore, home base for the loved-and-hated "Deadliest Catch" - seven times. Much has changed during the years, for me and for the place.

I first came this far west with close friends (Barry Tessman, Sean Farrell and Scott McGuire), three years later with French filmmakers (led by French television and political star Nicolas Hulot) and most recently as a visiting lecturer. I've arrived by ferry, small fishing boat, big fishing boat, small plane, helicopter and cruise ship; I've also kayaked along Unalaska's rugged shores and climbed a handful of its volcanic peaks.

Dutch Harbor is annually the nation's number one or two fishing port (trading off with Gloucester and followed closely by Kodiak). When I first came there was barely a bridge in town; today the town's center has gravitated to a couple strip centers across from the airport. Its most famous bar and brawling center - the Elbow Room - is long closed. Yet its future looks oddly bright, and not because of the success of the Discovery Channel show, but because of the Arctic Ocean's disappearing ice. As the Arctic's ice lessens each year - some suggest it will be gone for good in another ten years - it makes the Northwest passage a much more commercially viable shipping route from Europe, Africa and the U.S. cutting thousands of miles off each trip, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and gallons of diesel. The main port west of Canada? Dutch Harbor. There are many who believe the towns biggest boom is on the horizon.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Dutch Harbor originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia's largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union's heyday. Today - judging by a simple Google map search - there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning.

For decades the submarine station and a couple nearby support bases provided good jobs for locals and drew many Russians and Ukrainians to live in this easternmost outpost. They are also the reason that until the end of the Cold War Kamchatka was off-limits to the rest of the world. Even today, twenty years later, Russia continues to maintain a heavy military presence here.

The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Russia's nuclear legacy originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This land of volcanoes and earthquakes -- the western frontier of the literary "Ring of Fire" -- is still a month away from true spring. Dirty, crusted snow lies beneath the leafless trees and in the gutters along Petropavlovsk's main streets, which already look pretty grim, lined as they are by Soviet-era buildings. The only hints of color in town are the red-and-yellow hot dog-beer-and-coffee stands across from Lenin Square and the colorfully painted walls of a local gym. Otherwise, from the bottle-strewn banks of the fishing harbor to the top of the hills looking out over Avachinskaya Bay, the operative description of this city at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula is ... grey.

Long a place shrouded in secrecy, Kamchatka was until recently known to Westerners only as a closed military region or as a name on the Risk board. We are at the very edge of the Russian Far East, a region known locally as "the back of the beyond." The seven hundred and fifty mile long peninsula is lined by a pair of mountain ranges - the Sredenny (Central) and Vostochny (Eastern) - and from the air looks like a big fish. The Kamchatka River fills the trough between the two ranges. Encircling the city are snow-capped volcanoes, nearly 300 dot the peninsula, a tenth still active. When I ask the first people I meet -- two young journalism students, Victoria and Ivan - if they remember the last eruption they smile, wracking their memories.

"I think it was like two weeks ago," says Victoria. "But they happen so often, it's hard to be sure. And earthquakes, too. But we are used to them. Why do you think the buildings are so ... solid?"

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Kamchatka, Russia originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the past couple nights I've dreamed about being attacked by giant calamari; not the fried variety, but the long, gelatinous species, which wrap me up in big squid rings and push me into the sea. Which I'm sure has everything to do with spending the day in Hakodate, on the big island of Hokkaido, Japan's squid capital.

The streets leading to the morning market are heavy with restaurants, each featuring an illustration of a squid on its awning, billboard or even in neon. At open-air shops, tanks of still swimming squid are surrounded by trays of squid on ice, squid wrapped tight in plastic, dried squid, hammered squid, all cut, sliced and diced. Souvenir shops feature plastic squids, squid pens, even drinking cups made from ... squid. You won't be surprised that squid have been a staple here for thousands of years.

(The biggest squid ever caught? Twenty-four feet long. The largest invertebrate on the planet, they are thought to grow to as long as sixty feet but because they live at such great depths have never been studied in the wild.)

My question for these shopkeepers and restaurant owners, of course, is: Are they at risk of taking too many squid from the sea? Long thought beyond risk of being over fished - they don't live long anyway, are a very prolific species and fluctuate naturally - the reason they seem to be safe will surprise you.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Welcome to squid city! originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My first glimpse of Tsukiji fish market's big, daily tuna auction is surreal: A thousand frozen blue fin tuna - weighing between one and two hundred pounds each - laid out in symmetrical rows on a concrete floor. That first look through a scratched plastic peephole, blurring the edges of the scene, makes it evermore otherworldly.

A pair of cavernous auction rooms sit at the far back of the market. Entry to each is through eight big yellow canvas roll-down doors, each bay representing a different company. Beginning around three a.m. the big fish are laid out; an hour later buyers or their representatives - from restaurants, supermarkets and vendors within the market - arrive to begin their daily inspection. This being Japan it is all very prompt: At 5:30 the first side of the room is auctioned, at 6 the second side. By 6:15, 6:20 at the latest, tuna are being dragged out and loaded onto carts to be sent all around Tsukiji, Tokyo and cities beyond, some destined for as far away as China.

Tuna are the biggest business in the world's biggest fish market. Japanese love their blue fin and pay dearly. The biggest and best sell for $50,000, $80,000, occasionally more than $100,000. For a single fish. Last night we visited a high-end sushi joint in the chi-chi neighborhood of Ginza, which had split the cost of this year's traditional "first" tuna with another restaurant, on January 8th - for a 129 kilos (261 pounds) tuna they paid more than $104,000. For the next several days' lines stretched around the block for a taste.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Going Going Gone! The World's Biggest Tuna Auction originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A long line of three-wheeled electric carts steered by oversized circular handlebars, each with an attached four-foot-long wooden bed, whizzes through the narrow aisles of the Tsujiki fish market. Each is steered by a wild-eyed, sometimes smiling, sometimes glaring, Japanese fish monger - one of 60,000+ employees here in the world's largest fish market - who would just as soon mow you down as avoid you. Balanced precariously on the back of each are a three hundred pound frozen tuna or a tall stack of Styrofoam boxes filled with fish or crushed ice or twenty, three-foot long, just-sawed swordfish steaks.

It's just after six in the morning and the place has been alive for several hours, though it never really shuts down. The morning's biggest event - the auction of hundreds of big blue fin tuna - has just finished and its results are being delivered one-by-one to many of the 900 individual stalls in the open-air market. Sunrise pouring through the dust-covered skylights of the 74-year-old market mixes with the fluorescents that light up each small shop, crammed side by side and fronted by tables heavily laden with Styrofoam containers filled with just-dead fish of more than four hundred species and tanks and plastic bags filled with those still swimming.

The Tsujiki (skee-gee) fish market - more officially the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market - is Mecca for fish purveyors and sushi lovers alike. (The more general name is appropriate since under the same roof there are big produce and flower auctions as well ... though it's hard to compare the excitement of bidding for bell peppers with that of this year's biggest tuna to date, 261 pounds.) For several mornings we've gotten up before four a.m. and woken a taxi driver slumbering in his own front seat in order to be here the moment the tuna auction allows its first visitors in. Alex and I have a particular curiosity because over the years we've filmed big tuna in the wild and in farms that were ultimately headed here. Seeing them lined up on the floor - frozen, de-tailed and numbered with red food coloring -- means we've followed them nearly full circle. Our morning sushi-break at 8:30 means we will have truly followed them through the entirely of their lives.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Fish Mecca originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The direct flight from New York to Tokyo is one of the longest, thirteen hours and forty-five minutes, looping across Canada and the Bering Sea before paralleling Kamchatka and the eastern islands of Japan. It's a long way to travel for humans and viruses alike ... though I have to admit I hadn't thought about the latter until we touched down at Narita International Airport and found among the departure cards we needed to fill out included one labeled "contagion."

Alex Nicks and I have come to spend a few days filming tuna auctions at Tsujiki, the world's largest fish market - all under one open air roof are sold four hundred different fish species (700,000 tons sold each year, taking in $5.5 billion a year) and employing 60,000-65,000 wholesalers, accountants, auctioneers, company officials and distributors. The next few days promise to be fun and wild, thanks to the constant whir of all those people focused on the matter at end: selling and buying big fish.

But when we land at Narita, even before we could stand and stretch after the long flight, the plane was boarded by a dozen Japanese men and women cloaked in blue surgical gowns, caps and masks. We were instructed to stay in our seats as one of the insurgents, carrying a portable thermographic imaging gun to detect fevers, pointed in our faces, clicked the trigger and quickly assessed whether or not we were swine flu carriers. As the besmocked team moved aisle by aisle through the plane one of the stewardesses whispered that they recently quarantined eight passengers who arrived on a Northwest flight "for five days." While I have no idea what that encompasses - locking them in a small airport room, sliding sushi and water under the door? - I'm certainly hoping it doesn't happen to us.

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Bowermaster's Adventures -- Swine Flu and Tokyo originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After the Perfume River in Hoi An and the souks of Marrakech, Zanzibar rounds out the trio of 'most-exotic' places on the globe that I've long wanted to spend not days, but weeks. While these are very real places - crowded, often hot, occasionally dirty - they have each set themselves up in my mind, mostly through books, as mysterious, romantic. Now I've officially spent time in each.

Walking the tight streets of Stone Town, the centuries-old market on Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, the place lives up to the reputation built in my mind. The earliest visitors here were Arab traders who are said to have arrived in the 8th century; pirates swarmed its coastline beginning five to six hundred years ago. I walk into its earliest building, the mosque at Kizimkazi, which dates back to 1107. Hints of its human influences - Assyrians, Sumerians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Indians, Chinese, Persians, Portuguese, Omani Arabs, Dutch and English - are visible everywhere. Some, particularly the Shirazi Persians and Omani Arabs, stayed to settle and rule. With this influence, Zanzibar has become predominantly Islamic (97%) - the remaining 3% is made up of Christians, Hindus and Sikhs.

For centuries the Arabs sailed with the Monsoon winds from Oman to trade primarily in ivory, slaves and spices. The two main islands, Unguja and Pemba, provided an ideal base for the Omani Arabs, being relatively small, and therefore fairly easy to defend. From here it was possible for them to control 1,000 miles of the mainland coast from present day Mozambique to Somalia. Most of the wealth lay in the hands of the Arab community, who were the main landowners, kept themselves to themselves, and generally did not intermarry with the Africans.

Gallery: Bowermaster's Adventures

Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- Zanzibar

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Zanzibar originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ibo - officially Ilha Do Ibo, by the Portuguese who colonized it - is one of a string of 32 islands that make up the Quirimbas archipelago, separated from the Mozambique coast by just a shallow channel. Barely two miles long and two miles wide a fringe of reefs surrounds it; at low tide you can walk to the next island. On its main, slightly derelict beach fishermen hammer at boats turned on their sides and a pair of skinny boys walk the mangrove shallows with a net between them, trolling for baitfish. Just offshore cruise elegant-if-paint-flaked wooden dhows; their triangular white cloth sails making them look more windsurfer than sailboat. Ironically their masters can only fish when it's windy, since most have no motors.

A grassy square of abandoned colonial houses in ice-cream pastels anchors the island's main town (there are just three). Their grand size and wrought iron terraces and lampposts suggest prosperity. But the ironwork is rusted; the walls pitted with black mold and fig trees grow through the roofs. After the church, the grandest building on the square is the Customs House, pink-painted with ornate iron lattice along its roof. Inside, in a vague attempt at tourism, it has been turned into a tourist office. The unmanned display consists of an elephant skull, an old dining chair with a label reading "cadeira usada pelos portugueses" - chair used by the Portuguese - and a table laid out with a few coffee beans.

Ibo's heyday was during the late 1800s, based on slaves and ivory. When slavery was abolished in the early 1900s and modern ships no longer needed to stop off so often for water and supplies, it faded. The island's graves tell how, over the centuries, it attracted the Chinese, Arabs, British and Portuguese. Today it feels as if time has stopped since the Portuguese left abruptly in 1974, its population having fallen from 37,000 to fewer than 6,000. There are no cars, no banks, no postal service, no television or Internet and virtually no electricity ... except at its lone and elegantly restored hotel, the Ibo Island Lodge (www.iboisland.com).

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Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- Ibo

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Ibo originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>africabowermasterbowermastersadventuresibojbajon bowermasterJonBowermasterseychellesThu, 18 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermasters Adventures -- Becoming a French state]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/15/bowermasters-adventures-becoming-a-french-state/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/15/bowermasters-adventures-becoming-a-french-state/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/15/bowermasters-adventures-becoming-a-french-state/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,



Dozens of small tri-colored French flags hang from the awning of the bar 5/5 on Mamoudzou's seafront. A Malagasy polka/country/blues/rock band plays to a mixed crowd of blacks and whites. Two weeks ago a historic vote turned the street out front into a riot of celebration when 95.5 percent of voters on this tiny island of 186,000 people voted to officially become French citizens.

Though Mayotte is closer to Mombassa than Paris, its traditional dish is manioc eaten with boiled fish, is 98 percent Muslim and known for cultivating the sweet-smelling essence ylang ylang (which made the perfumery Guerlain famous) it is now the 101st department - or state -- of France.

A celebratory hangover lingers. I talk with a pair of women sitting in the back of the bar, taking advantage of a cool breeze blowing off the nighttime sea. They are all for the changes French citizenship will bring once the deal is formally signed in 2011: Social security benefits (though not for 25 years!), a new educational system, Islamic judges traded in for French ones and even the income taxes they will eventually have to pay. But they tell me they are also for a couple things the vote will outlaw: Polygamy and child marriages. "Those are from another time," says one, her face masked by a traditional beige-colored paste of ground coral and sandalwood meant to keep the sun away, skin younger.

That its overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is set to become full-fledged French citizens seems a bit odd to me. Having lived in France for nearly a decade I have seen how the French in France often treat Muslims living there, rewarding them with a high rate of joblessness, apartments in the poorest banlieues and even traditional headscarves banned from schools.

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Continue reading Bowermasters Adventures -- Becoming a French state

Bowermasters Adventures -- Becoming a French state originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>africabowermasterbowermastersadventuresfranceislamjbajon bowermasterJonBowermastermuslimseychellesMon, 15 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Communing with hermit crabs]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/12/bowermasters-adventures-communing-with-hermit-crabs/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/12/bowermasters-adventures-communing-with-hermit-crabs/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/12/bowermasters-adventures-communing-with-hermit-crabs/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,



It is with great privilege and no small amount of humility that I spend as many days as I can on remote, uninhabited atolls. This Sunday morning it is in the Alphonse group of the Seychelles - south of the main granite islands of Mahe, Praslin and La Digue - and is called St. Francois. Shaped like a broken piece of coral, with several small fingers jutting northwards, it is just two miles around. But the lagoon that surrounds, outlined by a sharp reef, is a sizable nine by three miles.

Two facts of nature here in mid-April warrant an early morning exploration of the island: high heat and low tides. By nine it will be over 90 degrees F and humid, the lagoon covered by just a shallow, warm sea.

At seven, when much of the world is contemplating miraculous ascensions and chocolate egg hunts, I am communing with hermit crabs. I've never seen such a huge population (though it's rivaled by a small island off Peru we visited last fall, which had a more intense concentration but nowhere near the volume). Every shell on the beach has been converted into a mobile home, from fingernail sized round shells to the long and conical to big, mossy, partially busted. There are easily fifty quick-moving hermies per square foot trundling shells of every size, shape and color. There does seem to be some weird segregation going on; though admittedly purely empirical it looks on parts of the beach that white shelled crabs mingle only with other white shelled crabs and that in other parts, moss-backed green shells hang only with their own kind.

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Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- Communing with hermit crabs

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Communing with hermit crabs originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>beachbowermasterbowermastersadventureshermit crabsHermitCrabsjon bowmasterJonBowmasteroceanseychelleswaterFri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- LaDigue]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/09/bowermasters-adventures-ladigue/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/09/bowermasters-adventures-ladigue/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/09/bowermasters-adventures-ladigue/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

I often ask audiences to define paradise. While responses vary, a high percentage involves some combination of white sand beach, coconut palm and blue-blue sea scenario. It's so pervasive I've long been curious where the notion first originated. Honeymoon brochure? 1940s movie? Similarly, as I travel and explore I keep running into places touted as "paradise on earth."

A couple islands in the Seychelles make that list, dating back to the mid-1700s when one of the first visitors to Praslin, Charles (Chinese) Gordon, went away convinced he had seen the site of the original Garden of Eden. Having spent yesterday - a gray, humid day - exploring it and nearby La Digue, it's clear how legends get started.

When Asia split off and drifted away from Africa, breaking up what 160 million years or so ago was the single continent of Gondwanaland, it left in its trail a couple hundred granite "droppings" scattered across what we now know as the Indian Ocean. This makes the Seychelles different from most island groups around the world, which are volcanic. The Seychelles are remnants of continental drift. Characterized by boulder-covered hills and hard mountains as high as 2,700 feet above sea level they are surrounded by narrow coastal plains and extensive coral reefs.


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Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- LaDigue

Bowermaster's Adventures -- LaDigue originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>africabeachbowermasterbowermastersadventuresedengarden of edenGardenOfEdenjbajon bowermasterJonBowermasterseychellestortisetortisesTue, 09 Jun 2009 09:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Pirates in Seychelles]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/04/bowermasters-adventures-pirates-in-seychelles/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/04/bowermasters-adventures-pirates-in-seychelles/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/04/bowermasters-adventures-pirates-in-seychelles/#commentsFiled under: , , ,



Five a.m. on the Indian Ocean, a quarter mile off the small granite island of La Digue. Daylight is still an hour away, the sea flat and quiet, still too early for the call of morning birds and too dark for pirates.

And pirates are on everyone's minds and lips here. Just days before Somali pirates had grabbed a tuna boat with a crew of 29 just to the north of where we motor, near Denis Island. A few days before that they'd taken a commercial dive boat and before that a private sailboat. Apparently being thwarted in waters closer to home - the Seychelles are easily six hundred miles from the coast of Somalia - due to an increase in navy ships patrolling, the brash pirates have headed here for new booty.

Walking the hot-hot streets of the capital of Mahe yesterday it was hard to avoid the subject. Headlines in the daily "Nation" claim "Piracy at Top of President's Agenda." Lunch of garlic prawns is at the Pirate Arms (right next to the Pirate Arms Shopping Complex). On the docks, fishermen tell me they're not going out to sea, for risk of being hijacked for ransom. In the Museum of Natural History literally the first exhibit in the door tells the story of the Seychelles' very first residents: Pirates. From sometime in the 15th century to 1730, these islands were the hideaway of some of the most notorious, most famously the celebrated Olivier Le Vasseur, alias "La Buze," who was said to have been the best of the best, or the worst of the worst, dependent on your take on pirates.

Last month I was a thousand miles to the east in the Maldives; I've come here to continue exploring the boundaries of what was once called the Sea of Zanj. Who knew that the news-garnering Somali pirates would show up at the same time?

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Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- Pirates in Seychelles

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Pirates in Seychelles originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>africabowermastersadventuresislandsjon bowermasterJonBowermasterpiratesseychellesThu, 04 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Welcome to the Sea of Zanj!]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/01/bowermasters-adventures-welcome-to-the-sea-of-zanj/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/01/bowermasters-adventures-welcome-to-the-sea-of-zanj/http://www.gadling.com/2009/06/01/bowermasters-adventures-welcome-to-the-sea-of-zanj/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,



Six to seven hundred years ago the very first to explore what we know as the Indian Ocean were Arabs, from Persia and the northern deserts. Searching what every sea-faring explorer of the time was seeking - trading routes and new lands to colonize - they explored what came to be known at the time as the Sea of Zanj, the Sea of Blacks. From the Maldives to the east coast of Africa (Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Seychelles islands, Mauritius, Reunion and more the Arabs put down roots, built sea ports. During the 1600s pirates, who used the islands off the coast of Africa as both temporary hideouts and permanent homes, followed the black Arabs. It wasn't until the late 1700s that Europeans - sailing from Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and more - first explored the region. It's a rich history, going back nearly eight hundred years; this past spring I spent two months exploring the seas between the Maldives and the coast of east Africa, in search of all those roots (and routes) and coming up on a sizable number of a species that it turns out is not so new to the region: Pirates.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks from dispatches from Jon at Bowermaster's Adventures.

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Welcome to the Sea of Zanj! originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>africaboatbowermasterbowermastersadventuresislandsjon bowermasterJonBowermasterseychilleswaterMon, 01 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Bowermaster's Adventures -- Bluepeace]]>http://www.gadling.com/2009/05/15/bowermasters-adventures-bluepeace/http://www.gadling.com/2009/05/15/bowermasters-adventures-bluepeace/http://www.gadling.com/2009/05/15/bowermasters-adventures-bluepeace/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , ,

Saffah Faroog sips a mango juice and continues explaining the history of the Maldives oldest environmental group, Bluepeace, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. He is its communications director, a volunteer like the rest of its staff, and has a great story to share - the organization has a great web presence and a long history of doing the right thing in the Maldives by keeping environmental stories in the news. There's no lack of subject matter with beach erosion, species loss, the impact of climate change and rising sea levels and the still lingering after effects of the 2004-tsunami still daily stories.

"Perhaps the most impressive thing for us here in the Maldives," he says, "is that just two years ago I would never had a conversation in public with you like this, not about these subjects. We had to be very careful about everything we wrote, anything we said in public or private, because almost anything could be construed as a potential criticism of the government, thus possibly resulting in recrimination.

"You have to remember that our new president was a journalist turned civil rights activist who was jailed and tortured and once held in solitary confinement for 18 months for criticizing the government. And that wasn't so long ago."

Continue reading Bowermaster's Adventures -- Bluepeace

Bowermaster's Adventures -- Bluepeace originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 15 May 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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