The Last Children of the Tide
George Gigauri, IOM's Chief of Mission in Papua New Guinea, travels to the edge of the world to meet the people of the Carteret Islands and finds out how they are clinging to their fragile homeland and adapting to climate change.
Many moons ago, in a faraway world, there lived a creature named Bonono, a giant eel larger than a coconut tree that would roam the ocean, hunting sharks and swallowing fishermen who had the misfortune to cross his path.
This is a legend of the people of the tide in the Tulun Islands, who live at the top of an underwater volcano in the Solomon Sea, known to the Western world as the vanishing Carteret atolls of the Pacific Ocean.
It’s said that they came here with the tide, many centuries ago, and attached themselves to the land, merged with it. No one has seen Bonono here for many decades but the Islanders are now plagued by a different beast: creeping, relentless and much more powerful.
It is devouring whole islands and its name is climate change.
Read more of the blog here.
