The call of a Caracola woke the dolphins hunters of their beds. Under the moonlight, the six men dragged into the village church.
There a priest took them in a whispered prayer, their barely audible voice about the sound of the waves colliding; The tide was high. Salted water grouped in parts of the town, which is located on Fanalei Island, a increasing land speck that is part of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
They were remote into wooden canoes before the first light, cutting the darkness until they were kilometers from the shore. After hours of scanning the horizon, one of the hunters, Lesley Fugui, saw a fin cut the glass water. He raised a 10 -foot long bamboo post with a piece of fabric tied at the end, warning others of his discovery. Then he made a phone call to his wife. He had found dolphins. The hunt would begin.
These men are among the last dolphin hunters of the Solomon Islands. Some conservationists say that killing is cruel and unnecessary. But for the approximately 130 residents of Fanalei, traditional hunting has acquired a renewed urgency as climate change threatens its home. They say they need dolphins for their lucrative teeth, which are used as local currency, to buy land on a higher land and escape their home that sinks.
Each tooth obtains 3 dollars from the Solomon Islands (approximately $ 0.36), a price established by Fanalei chiefs, and a single search for about 200 dolphins can bring tens of thousands of dollars, more than any other economic activity on the island.
“We also feel sorry for killing the Dolphins, but we really don’t have a choice,” said Fugui. He would be willing to leave the hunts, he added, if there were an alternative way to ensure the future of his family.
The crops can no longer be grown in Fanalei, which is approximately one third of the size of Central Park in New York City. The earth once fertile has been ruined by invading salt water. The Government has promoted algae agriculture as a source of income, while conservation groups abroad have offered cash to end the hunts. But the ocean remains an existential threat and the most profitable resource of the villagers. Government’s investigation suggests that the island could be underwater for the end of the century.
“For a low island like ours, we witness with our own eyes how Rise is affecting our lives,” said Wilson Filei, Chief Chief of Fanalei.
Over time, dolphins teeth have allowed villagers to pay a new church, a sea wall and an extension of local elementary school.
During the hunting season, which extends from January to April, people here can kill up to a thousand dolphins, but hunters say that the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable, which makes it difficult for them to locate and catch a pod.
While Dolphin meat is eaten and exchanged with neighboring food islands, Betel nuts and other products, teeth are the true hunting prize. They are used for cultural activities, and the families of possible boyfriends buy them for hundreds to give a woman during a traditional girlfriend pricing ceremony.
In recent years, most villagers have fled to a neighboring island. They continue hunting dolphins from there, saying that they need to buy more land to house those that remain and support their growing population.
Dolphin Hunting is a community issue in Fanalei. When Mr. Fugui raised his flag that morning, he triggered a cacophony of delight. The children climbed the trees to observe the hunters and encouraged “Kirio”, Dolphin in the local language of Lau, so that each resident knows that the hunt had begun. The men in canoes who hang near the coast broke the waves in the open ocean to help the hunters form a semicircle around the dolphins and corner them to land.
The teeth, once collected, are shared among all families according to a strict level system: hunters get the greatest participation (“first prize”); The married men who did not participate obtain the next bigger portion; and the remaining teeth are divided between widows, orphans and other homes without a male representative.
The village leaders also set aside a part of the teeth in what they call a “community basket” for the main works. One day, they expect this to include the purchase of land to expand a resettlement village on the largest island in Malaita.
These actions have been an important security network for residents such as Eddie Sua and her family. Mr. Sua was once a skilled fisherman and dolphin hunter who mysteriously paralyzed the neck down two years ago, and since then he has been prostrated in bed. These days, during the high tide, the floods of his house.
“We have to be afraid of these floods, because that is what will make us act to save our lives,” he said, watching the salt water lick the sides of his bed.
Delfines hunting is very good or “good tumas,” said Mr. Sua’s wife, Florence Bobo, in the local language of Pijin, especially that her husband cannot support the family as she did before. Both hopefully have enough money to relocate the island.
“If we did not have dolphin teeth, we would have no choice but to eat rocks,” joked Mr. Sua.
But a successful hunt is never a certainty. After detecting the Dolphins, Mr. Fugui and the other hunters began hitting rocks the size of a fist under water to drive the capsule to the shore. But a drag passed behind them, the roar of his engine drowning the boring blows of his rocks. The dolphins dispersed and the men returned empty -handed.
In the middle of this year, there was only a successful hunt in the Solomon Islands, where a town near Fanalei killed more than 300 dolphins.
Experts say it is not clear if dolphins hunting is sustainable. Rochelle Constantine, a marine biologist who teaches at the University of Auckland, and Kabini AFIA, climate and environmental researcher of the Solomon Islands, said that some of the most commonly hunted species seem to have healthy populations. But the effects of hunt are not yet clear in the most coastal and smaller dolphins.
For Fanalei’s people, the most pressing question is not the future of dolphins, it is their own survival against ascending seas.
“Dolphins hunting can be our identity,” said Fugui, “but our lives and the life of our children, that is the important thing.”
