41: Sapwtik and Lenger Island

 Site visit to the Sapwtik Marine Protected Area! Part of the PAN workshop, but also just a lot of fun and “snorkeling” (I didn’t bring my snorkel or fins for a change, so just swimming for me). The first time I saw a fully fledged reef drop off (since I haven’t gone outside the lagoon at Pakin yet). Water was not as clear as on Pakin, but still amazing!

On the neighboring island Lenger however, where we had lunch and waited for the high tide, there are no corals anymore. There used to be tons of them ~25 years ago, but since then they’ve all died due to sediment pollution (caused by upland deforestation on Pohnpei for planting sakau) and climate change. Sad story, now there’s sea grass and algae.

In general, the waters close to the coast of Pohnpei are mostly too muddy and polluted to swim in, but once you get to the islands off the coast (like Sapwtik and Lenger within the barrier reef, or even better out to Pakin and And atolls of course), it becomes clearer and swimmable. That’s also why Nett Point where I went swimming way back when was at the tip of a peninsula. It didn’t used to be this way though. Before the upland deforestation of the 80s and 90s, and of course climate change, the entire coast had crystal clear water with lots of fish. That’s it, environmental rant over.

Lenger was the airport during the Japanese occupation, and also well into the 60s until the current airport was built. So there’s still lots of cannons, remnants of factories, and concrete structures littered with bullet holes from the war. And also these “water holes” every now and then, which are impact craters from American bombs (of course the US bombed the airport in particular).