Treasure

Among So

Much

Trivia

Islands of Survival by Wade Doak. Published by Hodder and

Stoughton, Sydney, Auckland,

London, 1976 $A 10.95.

Pacific wanderings .. the evocative sub-title of this book is perhaps the most apt descrip tion for this disconnected con

glomeration of fascinating

material gleaned from the Solomon Islands area of the Pacific.

Author Wade Doak and his

family join a marine biologist

on his underwater research vessel, El Torito, and cruise for six months around the islands of the New Hebrides and Solomons. The activities and interests of the crew are numer ous.

El Torito is equipped with a small yellow submarine in which sunken wrecks from the second World War are inves tigated, or sharks prodded into shows of aggression to be cap tured on film. The owner and captain. Dr Walter Starck, also tests the effectiveness of his

wasp-like striped wetsuit in

warding off sharks.

His relative immunity from

shark approaches compared

with his diving companions

suggests it is a device worth adopting, whatever the reason for its repellent effect.

The book is written as a diary, with contributions from the author’s wife and children (sometimes in verse), and from a visiting Hollywood film crew

who spend some time with the boat.

This adds to the unevenness of the text. But, if you per severe with the mixture of diary entries, recorded conver sations and philosophical tit bits, and overlook the occasional obscurities, there are valuable finds to be made.

The book has a wealth of in triguing information. The topics touched include acting, the usefulness of the coconut,

communing with dolphins,

head-hunting rites, inter personal communication, mar riage ceremonies, altered states of consciousness, submerged wrecks and ghosts.

We learn that only the underfed giant clam shell is able to trap a diver by closing its jaws on a limb, that the best way to slice a pineapple is ver tically, and that the sea cucum ber, when disturbed, will expel its internal organs as a decoy.

Implicit in the title Islands of Survival is the author’s sugges tion that perhaps the people of the remote Solomon Islands have found the key to survival in a world of rapidly dwindling resources; that they may be come ‘the transmitters of the

precious message it could cost us our whole civilisation to learn: the absolute necessity for all life forms to live in har mony the ecological impera tive to maintain diversity and

flexibility.’

Or perhaps the dolphins hold the secret of survival? Dr Starch’s main ambition is to establish a base in the tropics for El Torito, a self-sufficient island where he can develop his ideas of a technology specially adapted to the needs of a vil lage community, and carry out experimental work into the possibility of real communi cation between man and dol phin.

In a fanciful epilogue we are given a rather obscure glimpse into the near future, when that communication has indeed been contrived, and the dol phins seem to have established a quiet supremacy, ‘meekly inheriting the sea’. Man’s pos ition in the world picture is not made very clear.

The many coloured photo graphs are superb, including a close look at the rare golden cowrie in its live state and sen sitive glimpses of traditional everyday activities in the island villages. They give the reader a warm, friendly entree to the appealing world of the Solomon Islands. - Jo Rudd, Lecturer at the International Training Institute, Mosman.

Two of the El Torito’s crew ... ‘a warm, friendly entree to the appealing world of the Solomon Islands’. From Islands of Survival