Pitufa.at

The pass of an atoll is the bustling centre of its underwater life with corals providing a home for millions of little swarmfish hiding in delicate species like staghorn, groups of surgeons and parrots as well as couples of butterflies roaming the slopes, groupers and morrays hiding in crevices, swarms of snappers in the deeper water and barracudas, sharks and trevallies passing by. It’s also the most important fishing ground and therefore the base of nutrition for remote communities, like here in Kapingamarangi.
We hardly believed our eyes, when we spotted a poster in the mayor’s office, showing a gigantic underwater blast that produced a water column reaching high into the sky. Imagine the impact of such an explosion with all fish in the vicinity killed, the coral shredded to rubble!Reading the poster, we couldn’t believe that the US were boasting about “expanding the pass” as development aid for the atoll… And that didn’t happen sometime in the last century when people still had no idea about enviromental impacts, no, they committed this crazy operation in 2021!!
We asked the mayor and were told that locals were not allowed in the vicinity of the blast and apparently they were not warned about the impact the blast would have. It was meant to widen the pass, so the supply ship would come into the lagoon, but brace yourselves for the best bit: the supply ship still stays outside despite the wider channel, so the locals still have to go out in their little boats to deliver copra and get their shipments. Nothing achieved, horrible damage done. But I’m sure the project sounded great when it was announced as development aid.
The side of the pass that was blasted is still a lifeless desert of coral rubble with no young recruits growing and no fish around. Money well spent.