Rarotonga’s wetlands

Kia orana from Rarotonga.
You could be excused for not realising that 2 February is World Wetlands Day because there are an awful lot of ‘world days’ and this is one of the more recent ones (the first was in 1997).
The word ‘wetlands’ brings to mind mangrove swamps and bogs and we have neither of these in the Cook Islands but apparently on various southern group islands we do have freshwater lakes, swamps and marshes, mountain streams and also one tidal salt marsh.
The latter is at Ngatangiia so to mark the day I decided to pay a visit.
(The following information comes from the Wetlands International website compiled by Anna Tiraa, then of the Cook Islands Conservation Service; and the Cook Islands Biodiversity Database)
Ngatangiia Harbour is a natural harbour on the east coast of Rarotonga, with extensive intertidal silt and sand flats and the estuaries of two streams, Avana Stream (the largest stream on Rarotonga) and Turangi Stream. The muddy delta of Avana Stream filled much of the harbour after forest clearance early in the century. The shallow grassy marshes which occur in the intertidal zone around the harbour are the only saline marshes in the Cook Islands (bottom right in the photograph).

Ngatangiia harbour showing intertidal salt marsh at bottom right.

There has been extensive dredging in the harbour north of the Avana Stream mouth, and the lagoon is reported to be considerably degraded.
Birds such as the reef heron and the wandering tattler (in the video) feed in the area on small crustacea and a large number of fiddler crabs make their home there.
These crabs are common in the southern group islands
They feed outside their burrows when the tide uncovers ground during daylight hours. Waving displays, combat, and courtship usually occur for 2 or 3 days around spring tide. The large females usually build chimneys at this time and males approach the chimneys (sometimes waving). Male combat is ritualised and does not involve injury.
Well, you can certainly see the waving and combat but I think it was a bit too early for the chimneys. A photograph in the CI Biodiversity Database shows they can be quite tall so it must take a while to build them.
The wandering tattlers are summer visitor. They breed in Alaska and then fly down here and stay from September until about April. You can often see them feeding along the shoreline on the island’s beaches.
This small area of the Avana lagoon is the only tidal salt marsh in the entire Cook Islands and since it’s under water at high tide it should all be Crown land so not available for reclamation and building but the area seems to have shrunk over the last twenty-five years or so.
It is probably an important breeding and nursery area for certain marine and freshwater species so let’s hope it can survive and help us do the same.

Nikao action song dress rehearsal

Like the previous video, this one is also about four-and-a-half minutes long and for the same reason, to give viewers a better impression of the action song (kapa rima) the Nikao dancers, drummers and choreographer produced for the 2009 Maeva Nui cultural dance competition.
Sharp-eyed people will probably spot that not all the costumes have been completed. Also, in the final performance the young warriors at the beginning of the dance were carrying gifts of food. You have to use your imagination here.
The dancers have different costumes for each of the four dance sections but the ute (chant) is usually a pareu uniform while the pe’e (legend) is made from rauti and other greenery and is prepared just before the competition performance. The amount of work that goes into the drum dance and action song costumes is enormous but, as I mentioned in the previous post, Nikao came first in the costume section so the effort paid off.
The dress rehearsal was a pretty intense affair with all four items performed then at the end of the night some of the experts in the audience came up with criticism and suggestions for improvement.
Only one dance is performed on competition nights - it must have been a piece of cake after the rehearsal!
The standards at Te Maeva Nui get higher each year and Nikao placed second in the kapa rima.
Congratulations to choreographer Piritau Nga and his team of assistants as well as to the dancers.
(The Ministry of Cultural Development videos all the performances and DVDs are available on their website.)

Nikao drum dance dress rehearsal

This video is a bit longer than usual, 4.5 minutes, but I wanted to show more than just a few highlights of the drum dance performance by the young people of Nikao village.
The effort and enthusiasm they show are wonderful and if you’ve seen any of the earlier videos about Nikao preparing for Maeva Nui (cutting hibiscus, preparing kiriau and practicing) the changes are remarkable.
As well as the dance practices, the dancers have to make their own costumes, with a bit if help from the village mamas, former dancers, friends, relatives and so on. There are four sections to the Maeva Nui competition and two of them (drum dance and action song) have very elaborate costumes so by the time of the competition everyone must be very tired. All that effort for just a few minutes on the stage!
In this case everyone would think it well worth while because Nikao took first place in the drum dance and costume sections.
In fact Oire Nikao won the costume, ura pa’u and pe’e sections, came second in the choir and kapa rima sections and shared third place in the ute section with Nukuroa.
As Cook Islands News reported, “It was a thrilled Nikao team that received their winning prize of $15,000 and danced in celebration just to show that the week of dancing hadn’t taken its toll on the young performers.”
(The Ministry of Cultural Development videos all the performances and DVDs are available on their website.)