Tag Archives: marshall islands

Ailuk’s Unique and Authentic Canoes

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.

The Motus of Wotje

Wotje is our second atoll that we have visited in the Marshall Islands.  We spent a large part of our time at the Wotje motu discovering their WWII remnants.  However, we also spent a lot of time exploring their beautiful motus.

A motu is a small, low-lying island or islet. It’s often used to describe islands made of coral and sand in tropical regions, especially in the Pacific Ocean.  

We start our explorations with the neighboring motus. There are 4 that we circumnavigate over several hours.  We have to work with the tides as it can be challenging to cross between motus.  So, we leave an hour before low tide which gives us about 3-3.5 hours of exploring.  Perfect for these 4 little spits of lands.

Normally Matt and I prefer to walk in flip flops, but with the terrain on the motus we have to resort to wearing shoes.  About 1/4 of the islet will be sand with small pebbles.  But at least 1/2 of the motu is made of sharp coral and reef which is difficult to traverse in anything but shoes.

The water is so clear it does not even look like it is there.  In the top photo, there is water from me all the way to the dinghy.  The 2nd left photo is one of our crossings between motus.  The water is about knee high with a current coming from the ocean to the lagoon.

We meet some new friends including a grasshopper, lizard and lots of crabs.

The Unfortunate Truth

We come across this recently beached boat from Ecuador.  Highly suspicious and probably a drug boat.  It is over 6,000 nautical miles from home.  Parts of fiberglass were strewn all over the beach.  Drugs are rampant in the Marshall Islands and some drug runners use this as a transition spot into Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii.

I would be remiss if I did not show all aspects of motu walking.  Unfortunately, across every country, every island has trash.  The windward side being a collective area for everything plastic including tons of flip flops.  Marshall Islands are no exception.  

One thing we have never seen before in any of the countries we’ve been to over the last 8 years is a half melted mannequin. Of course Matt could not just leave her on the rocks…he had to position her sitting up.

We also take the opportunity to burn some of our trash.  We have been away from civilization for about a month now with nowhere to dispose of our trash.  So we take our paper and cardboard trash and burn it in an old FAD beacon.  We leave no mark on the beach.

In the end, we walked about 15 motus within the Wotje atoll.  Not very many considering there are over 75 motus around the perimeter of Wotje.

Our blog posts run 8-10 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occurred around mid-November 2024.   In our previous two blog posts we showcase all of the WWII remnants we found on Wotje including more anti-aircraft guns, coastal guns, bunkers, and several sunken planes and ships.  Part I and Part II.

WWII Remnants on Wotje: Part II

In our blog post “WWII Remnants on Wotje: Part I” we discover loads of anti-aircraft guns, coastal defense guns, a cannon, Betty Bomber engines and propellers and more.  But we had discovered so many more artifacts in Wotje that we spit it over two blog posts.  In Part II, we will show you more WWII buildings, artifacts and Japanese signage.

We found this fallen water tank in the jungle, along with an exploded shell, and a cannon sticking straight up into the sky.  One of the things we noticed is that the WWII remnants on Wotje are in far greater disarray than those on its neighboring island of Maloelap.

We were not sure what this WWII building used to be but it was some type of manufacturing plant based on the machinery inside.  It was way too dilapidated to risk going inside.

WWII Defense Bunkers

We walked the entire perimeter of the island (about 7.5 miles).  There were several places that had 1.5m tall walls made of concrete and stone.  Of course, they were not 100% in tact, but they were still standing.  About every 15m they had a gun placement hole.

The shoreline was full of these defense bunkers.  As you can see most are in complete shambles, but then again, they are 80 years old.  We did find two gun placement attachments in the widows (lower right photos) which was a first find for us.

We also discovered some new types of defense bunkers (top right and bottom right).  These are new versions to us as we did not see anything like this on Maloelap.  Wonder why they had wide open windows?  It seems to leave them pretty exposed.

Japanese Signs from WWII

Another new find on Wotje was this bunker which still had two, original Japanese signs inside.  The top right says “danger flammable’s” loosely translated.  The other sign above the door could not be translated as too many characters were faded.  So, inside this large bunker is another locked room with a massive steel door.  This is where Matt is standing.  They stored their ammunition in this room.

Another defense bunker with a Japanese sign. Unfortunately it is illegible and we were unable to translate it.

Making the Best out of the Wreckage

The building in the top left used to be the Seaplane Command center.  Wotje built a seaplane dock and had dozens of seaplanes coming and going at any given time.  The Japanese used these seaplanes to scout out the enemy.  Today, this building is used as a storage building for drums of fuel (top right).  The middle right and bottom photo are both WWII buildings that have been converted into homes for the locals. Look at the bottom photo with its huge steel door for both the window and the front door.

We found several pieces of machinery that we could not figure out their original purpose.  We have guesses…but who knows.  The top left photo might be some type of coral grinding machine for making cement.  The top middle photo is a NAK 3DM engine powering a pump of some sort….maybe to pump water from the sea to a generator?

We hope you have enjoyed coming on this walk through WWII history.  It was a great learning process for us, but also truly tragic and heartbreaking to think of all the lives lost.

Our blog posts run 8-10 weeks behind actual live events.  This blog post occurred during the 2nd week of November 2024.  Be sure to catch Part I of WWII Remnants on Wotje.