Ailuk, also known as the “Island of Sails,” is famous for its daily use of traditional canoes. Usually, you will see long boats powered by outboards. You won’t see many, but most locals will use these long boats to get around rather than the “old or original” canoes. Which is such a shame as the canoes are simply delightful to watch as they zoom around the lagoon.
Ailuk is an atoll with most of its 57 motus on the eastern side of the atoll. Which is highly unusual and will make for a challenging stay if the easterly tradewinds shift to westerlies.
The total land mass of Ailuk is only 5.4 square kilometers (2.1sq. miles) but its lagoon area is almost 178 square kilometers (68.51 sq. miles). The population of 250 people is spread across 10 main motus but the majority of them live on the Ailuk island.
Conservation
Ailuk has decided to conserve two areas covering 209 marine acres and protecting the green turtle, hawksbill turtle, black tip/white tip/gray sharks, hump head wrasse and parrot fish. In exchange for maintaining a “no-take” conservation in these areas for 10 years, the Seacology.org foundation is providing funding to complete the airport, guests lodging, and a solar system to power them.
Islet Walking
We enjoy lots of “island walks” around the motus or islets. We explore Chiebeiku, Uriga, Anenkora, Kapen, Enijabro, Enejelae, Bigen, and (4) unnamed spits of land. Usually, when are walking around we are scouting for sea treasures (sea shells) but you can’t help but look through all of the junk that washes up on the windward side of the island.
These are our tracks around 3 of the 9 islands we circumnavigated in the north area of Ailuk.
It is always best to walk around during low tide so you have more “land” to walk on and you are able to cross between islands. Sometimes the little channel is really shallow and has little to no current. Some times the channel is wide and deep and totally impassable on foot.
The islands surrounding the atoll can be lovely with sandy patches, palm trees, and shallow reefs.
The terrain varies from sand, to rocks, to broken coral, pebbles, and dirt.
Where napping and tree climbing are islands past times.
But then you have the unfortunate truth that smacks you in the face…all of the trash.
The Unfortunate Truth
Like all islands, in all countries, the windward (ocean) side of the islands are covered in trash. This is not trash from the locals of RMI. This is trash from passing fishing boats and cargo ships. What do we find???
We see lots of flip flips (like lots), rope, fishing floats of all shapes and sizes, plastic bottles, lighters, parts of chilly bins (refrigerators), freon tanks, toothbrushes, laundry baskets, buckets, hard hats, fishing boots, gloves, and more.
Some of the fishing floats, if still usable have been recycled by the locals. Some use it as decorations (bottom left photo), some cut them half and use them as planters, and some reuse them for fishing. But there are still hundreds all over the islands.
FADS: Fish Aggregating Devices are all over the islands. These are made from bamboo or PVC pipes tied together forming a raft which bobs in the water using floats and is covered in fishing net. These FADs have a beacon tied to them so the fisherman can locate them. Small fish hide under the FADs which attracts larger fish which are then hunted by the fisherman. So, pieces of the FADs can be found across the reef and beaches (rope, nets, beacons, bamboo, and floats).
We find lots and lots of rope or line. Sometimes the locals can reuse the line but often it is more trouble to detangle it than its worth.
We stumble across several shipwrecks. These were either abandoned (drug boats) or crashed on the reef. One particular boat still had its outboards on it — including beautiful stainless steel props.
But there are also loads of treasures including sea shells, drift wood, and occasionally, rarely, Japanese glass fish floats.
Who Lives on these Islands?
All of the locals live on the island of Ailuk which is in the southern end of the atoll. However, many own property on other islands. In the northern islands of the atoll, we found a dozen copra houses or compounds and a church. The houses can be made of brick or wood and with metal container sheets for a roof.
We did meet two locals who were processing copra in the north island of Kapan. They were so lovely that we donated our old spinnaker, a large tarp, and some fishing gear. They were so happy as they can make 3 sails for their canoes with the spinnaker material and use the tarp as shade for their copra.
Ailuk atoll and all of its many fringing islands. We walked 16-18 of the 57 islands. Some were so small that we are not sure if they are considered islands or islets.
Our blog posts run 8-10 weeks behind actual live events. We visit the beautiful Ailuk atoll in late November 2024. Did you read about our motu walks on the Wotje Atoll, check out our last blog post.
