Wartime Road Baffles Porpoises

The nearest cattle station is a long way from Bikenibeu Islet, on Tarawa, in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, but villagers there “rode the herd on an unusual quarry in March and ended up with a satisfying meal.

A GEIC newsletter reported that the villagers sighted a school of porpoises in a nearby lagoon and set off in a fleet of canoes to herd them towards the shore, where they were guided into a channel near Bikenibeu.

Six were driven ashore and rapidly cut up for distribution to every household in the village.

The newsletter added, “Our reporter says that the school was ‘swimming hopelessly ’ in the lagoon and an interesting sidelight on the story is the fact that there used to be a passage from the lagoon to the ocean just east of Bonriki, at Temaiku, where porpoises were often caught before the war. During the war the Americans blocked the passage to make a road from the air-strip at Bonriki to the rest of South Tarawa.

“One theory has been advanced that the porpoises had a migration route which led into Tarawa lagoon from the west and out at the Temaiku passage, and that is why so many were caught there.

“Others say that the porpoises like the smell of the Tonga trees growing there and nowhere else on Tarawa. Still others say that the porpoises were called to Temaiku by Gilbertese magic and link their theory with the Tabaonga people (Gilbertese of the old days whose extraordinary and absurd activities are recorded in many stories) who lived at Temaiku.

“Whatever the reason for the arrival of the porpoises they made a welcome addition to the diet of the people of Bikenibeu .”