Hello and Haiyan

Hello!

I’m spending five months in Palau on a Pforzheimer Foundation Public Service Fellowship, working as a research intern with the Palau International Coral Reef Center (PICRC). I’ve been here two weeks so far and will attempt to catch up with everything that has happened, and then will (theoretically) regularly update this blog to record some of my experiences and photographs.

I’m helping out with various research projects at PICRC, studying both the ecological and social sides of marine conservation. I’ll also work with public outreach and education efforts at the center’s aquarium. I’m living in Koror, the population center (Palau is a chain of over 300 islands, and Koror hosts the commercial center and around 14,000 people), and staying with a host family, Stephen and Zabeth Kyota, who live a five-minute bike ride away from the center. For now it’s just the three of us, but they have three kids: a son in the US military, a daughter in college in Guam, and a son at a boarding high school on the island. I’m hoping the younger kids will be home for the holidays soon and I’ll be able to meet them!

My sleeping arrangements; the fan is by far the most important attribute of the room.

PICRC

From PICRC's dock

The most noteworthy event so far was Super Typhoon Haiyan. I arrived on Sunday, November 3^rd, and by Wednesday the office had closed to allow people time to secure their homes and stock up on water and non-perishables before the storm hit that night. Katherine, another American intern at PICRC, was house sitting at a high-end (for Palau) apartment, so the younger/Western crew at PICRC (Chris, a postdoc from Australia; Johanna, a German researcher working with Chris; and Julien, a postdoc from France) spent the afternoon and night there, watching movies, sharing snacks, and enjoying the typhoon-proof concrete walls and generator. It ended up being a great first typhoon experience: I was so happy to have people to hang out with, felt very safe, and admittedly, still slightly jet-lagged, slept through most of the storm.

The following morning it was calm and people were out on the streets clearing strewn vegetation. From what I could see in Koror there was minimal damage and everyone was okay. We didn’t regain power at my host family’s house for about three days, and then we started hearing reports that Kayangel, the northernmost island, had been completely flattened: not a single house remained standing. Fortunately everyone had survived more or less unharmed, and they were taking refuge in the cultural center in Koror. Around that time we also heard the initial news from the Philippines. Needless to say, we were extremely grateful that Palau was relatively lucky, and our hearts heavy with the thought of the unimaginable destruction 500 miles to the west (Do consider donating to relief efforts in the Philippines!).

Safely ensconced, we watched storm clouds gather over Koror.

The generator only served outlets on the ceiling, obviously intended for emergency lights. We didn't let that get in the way of our movie marathon. 

Men clear fallen trees from the road. 

One of the reasons I applied for this fellowship was to work and live with communities for whom the effects of climate change and ocean degradation are not distant possibilities but lived realities. On small islands with little elevation, there’s nowhere to go when the sea comes in. Palau historically is not in the usual path of typhoons, but was devastated last year by Typhoon Bopha; the most recent typhoon before that was in the 1980s. Of course, we can’t directly attribute Haiyan to climate change, or create a definitive trend out of two consecutive storms, but there’s no question that this is unusual, and devastating to these small island communities. We can think of Eric Pooley's apt analogy that circulated around the time of Superstorm Sandy: we can’t directly connect any one of Barry Bond’s home runs to steroid use, but we can look at the larger trend and note that changes are afoot.

I still experienced the storm very much from the “haves” end of the spectrum, but am nonetheless humbled by the power of the storm and the resilience of these communities. Haiyan provided a prompt reminder of why I’m here, and will set the tone for the work I do over the next five months.

More pictures and hopefully much lighter anecdotes to follow soon! If you would like to read more about my diving adventures, check out my Our World-Underwater National Parks Internship blog. For more filter and fewer of these pesky words, follow me on Instagram.