What a wonderful day away from it all. Started the day at 4:30 am, through Arutanga passage at the very first ray of light of the longest day of the year. Made good speed and arrived outside the narrow passage before 8. The capatin decided to try a little low speed trawling pass around that side of the Atoll to see if any fish would bite. None did but a pod of dolphins greeted the boat.
Snorkeling off the passage i saw the young man skin dive down to 18 meters and pass tools and equipment back and forth to the divers anchoring a mooring and noticed a school of hundreds of great trevally. Quite unusual for Apex predators to form such large schools.
On dry land, after a well orchestrated wiggle through the meandering, narrow and shallow passage we were surprised how well the corrugated aluminium survived 40+ years of abandonment – the climate has done its part and neatly separated them from the original timber framing including Tamanu.
There were numerous fresh turtle tracks indicating Manuae is still an important habitat for these majestic reptiles.
What were once neat Austrian conceived rows of coconut trees is now covered in dense foliage and Tamanu trees made a lot of progress. It was thus surpsising how few seabirds nest on Manuae. They seem to realise that Takutea, another 70 miles to the southeast is a much better choice due to the absence of rats.
