Because these islanders hunt the dolphins

The call of a shell awakened the dolphin hunters from their beds. Under Moonlight, the six men dragged themselves into the village church.

There a priest led them to a whispered prayer, his just audible voice on the sound of the waves that crash; The tide was high that day. The salted water gathered in some parts of the village, which is located on the island of lights, a grain of land in constant fog which is part of the Solomon islands in the southern Pacific.

They rolled into wooden canoe before first light, cutting the darkness until they were miles away from the shore. After hours of scan of the horizon, one of the hunters, Lesley Fugui, saw a fin slice of the glassy water. He raised a 10 -footed bamboo pole with a piece of fabric linked to the end, noting the others of his discovery. So he made a phone call to his wife. He had found the dolphins. The hunt would start.

These men are among the latest dolphins hunters of the Solomon Islands. Some environmentalists say that the massacre is cruel and useless. But for about 130 residents of lights, traditional hunting has taken a renewed urgency while climate change threaten their home. They say they need dolphins for their profitable teeth, which are used as a local currency, to buy land on a higher ground and escape their sinking house.

Each tooth recovers $ 3 from the Solomon Islands (about $ 0.36) – a price set by the Chiefs of Fanalei – and a single hunt of about 200 dolphins can bring tens of thousands of dollars, more than any other economic activity on the island.

“We also sorry for killing the dolphins, but we really didn’t choose,” said Fugu. He would be willing to abandon the hunts, he added, if there was an alternative way to secure the future of his family.

Crops can no longer be grown on lights, which is about a third of the dimensions of Central Park in New York City. The earth once fertile has been ruined invading salted water. The government has promoted agriculture of algae as a source of income, while the storage groups abroad offered money to end the hunts. But the ocean remains both an existential threat and the most profitable resource of the village inhabitants. The government’s research suggests that the island could be underwater by the end of the century.

“For a low island like ours, we witness our eyes how the sea is hitting our lives,” said Wilson Filei, head of Chief of Fanalei.

Over time, the teeth of the dolphins have allowed the inhabitants of the village to pay for a new church, a sea wall and an extension to the local elementary school.

During the hunting season, which goes from January to April, people here can kill up to a thousand dolphins, but hunters say that time is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it more difficult for them to identify and trap a pod.

While dolphin meat is eaten and barter with islands nearby for food, betel nuts and other products, teeth are the real hunting prize. They are used for cultural activities and families of future spouses buy them from hundreds to give to a woman during a traditional ceremony of the bride’s price.

In recent years, most of the village inhabitants have fled to a nearby island. They continue to hunt the dolphins from there, saying that they have to buy multiple land to host those left behind and support their growing population.

Dolphin Hunting is a community affair in lights. When Mr. Fugui raised his flag that morning, he began a cacophony of joy. The children climbed trees to watch hunters and applauded “Kirio” – dolphin in the local lau language – so that every resident knew that the hunt had started. The men in canoes hanging near the shore broke through the waves in the open ocean to help hunters form a semicircle around dolphins and put them to land to land.

The teeth, once collected, are shared between each family according to a rigorous level system: hunters get the largest share (“first prize”); The married men who did not participate obtained the next largest part; and the remaining teeth are divided between widows, orphans and other families without a male representative.

The leaders of the village have also put part of the teeth aside in what they call a “community basket” for the main works. One day, they hope that this includes the purchase of land to expand a village of resettment on the island of the southern underworks.

These actions were an important security network for residents such as Eddie his and his family. His Mr. was once a skilled fisherman and a dolphin hunter who mysteriously became paralyzed from the neck down two years ago, and has been forced since then. In these days, during the high tide, its domestic floods.

“We must be afraid of these floods, because it is what will make us act to save our life,” he said, looking at the licking of salted water on the sides of his bed.

The hunt for dolphins is very good or “good tumas,” said his wife of his, Florence Bobo, in the local language of Pijin, especially now that her husband is not able to support the family as he did once. They both hope to have enough money to move out of the island.

“If we had no teeth of the dolphins, we would have no choice but to eat rocks,” he joked.

But a successful hunt is never a certainty. After identifying the dolphins, Mr. Fugui and the other hunters started beating the rocks of fist under the water to guide the pod towards the shore. But a fishing boat passed behind them, the roar of his engine that drowned the opaque tonals of their rocks. The dolphins spread and the men returned empty -handed.

In the middle of this year’s season, there was only a successful hunting in the Solomon Islands, where a village near Fanalei killed over 300 dolphins.

Experts say that it is not clear if the hunt for dolphins is sustainable. Rochelle Costantino, a marine biologist who teaches at the University of Auckland, and Kabini Afia, a researcher for the climate and the environment of the Solomon islands, said that some of the most commonly hunted species seem to have healthy populations. But the effects of hunting are not yet clear on more coastal and smaller dolphins.

For the people of Fanalei, the most urgent question is not the future of the dolphins: it is their survival in front of the increasing seas.

“The hunt for dolphins can be our identity,” said Fugu, “but our lives and the life of our children – this is what is important”.