sábado, 22 de diciembre de 2018

Daddy! Daddy! We saw a stingray!"

Beach of Chateau Royale 

Chateau Royale beach at sunset
I've just finished cleaning my mask, adjusting my fins and I'm ready to swim into the water  when suddenly my daughter comes running up to me from the sea yelling: "Daddy! Daddy! We saw a stingray!" - Literally! My reaction? Asking "Where?" - Yes! Why not? My daughter is not in panic, just excited about spotting a sting-ray in the sandy bottom while snorkeling. No fear: just pure and simple happiness. This is something that will never happen in Paris  where the only  wild encounters are with cats usually roaming their territories around the parking lot and many snails (yes, the same ones that french people love to cook a la provençale).


yeah! this one goes to the pan!


The nature in its total awesomest 

However here in New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, walking next to the shore or in the park is just like a real aquarium or zoo. A few hundred meters from the place where we were staying, there is a berth where the locals can drop their speedboats and/or sailboats into the sea and nxet to hat there is  a shore reef that extends  into the lagoon like a tongue. This is the Park Pierre Vernier and the fringing reef Ricaudi.
Pierre Vernier
Plage de l'Anse Vata
During the low tide the coral is exposed and you can walk, tip toeing in the rocks and the sand, however being careful not to step on any of the coral, almost to the buoy that marks the entry of the channel and then the drop off to maybe 15 meters down. Crabs, lobsters and  small fish that are trapped in the small ponds and waiting for the high tide, and sometimes there might even be a tricot raye: a sea krait.











Our kids have a memory of being raised in the jungle and next to the sea. Living in a city like Paris for the last 5 years can sometimes make them feel like living in a cage. They love animals and anything wild. In Paris they love to go to the zoo and the botanic parks, and also the Natural Museum and the Evolution Gallery. They love sharks and rays, and anything that is aquatic. In a civilized place they can  only experience wildlife  through the glass of zoos, aquariums or through videos and books. Here, in New Caledonia, what we see through glass in Paris is just part of the scenery. Walking on a hill or in the jungle or through the mangroves, going to the beach, swimming, snorkeling and diving; all  activities that are embedded in the amazing daily life of the Grand Terre island. And its lagoon...




Someone asked me "where would you like to settle finally?". My answer is clear: anyplace but just next to the sea, and a place like the New Caledonian barrier reef is just ... a dream come true, if it could be possible (New Caledonia is outrageously expensive, a comment for another post). The peninsula of Noumea greets you from every angle with amazing views, spectacular sunsets and no less great dawns. It is just there: looking outside the window of your room (if you are lucky to have sea view), or few meters walking down the hills. The mountains reach almost the shore and the city of Noumea is surrounded by peaks and entrenched in gentle hills. You can walk, stroll, ride and run in the promenades, go up the hills for better views, and if you are fully into caledonian lifestyle, why not kite surf, or paraglide just after work? Instead of a happy hour, you jump off the hills to enjoy the upward breeze and the (I'm sure) amazing view...












My pictures do not make a good testimony of how amazing each day can be, so you can browse the different maritime landscapes here: New Caledonia's Lagoon 360 view website

What have they experience in a short time?

During the 3 weeks in New Caledonia, we did 6 dives with Emma who is now an experienced diver, and 2 with Eloisa who is learning how to div who is also a natural born diver. We also did  lots of swimming and snorkeling in the beaches around the city of Noumea. Also we did short visits to the small islands near Noumea. For example, we toured Isle de Pines which deserves a post on itself.




Nevertheless, not everything is just about corals. We already know that the critical role of the corals regarding the Ocean's health but we also forget about the mangroves! Mangroves werent considered civilized, meaning that they were chopped down and cleared for causes like "real state, have a better view of the sea and a beach, they look dirty and sure a source of rodents and diseases". In our view of what's nice and clean, mangroves do not have corals' appeal, so taking them down, is cleaning that part of the city.
"Mangroves don’t inspire awe and wonder the way coral reefs, rainforests or wide-open grasslands do. In many parts of the world, they’ve long been frowned upon as dirty, mosquito-infested tangles of roots that stand in the way of an ocean view" (read the full article here)
With the SOS Mangroves NC bénévolats we took half a day to visit the mangrove area left around Noumea. We learnt a lot and had fun walking through the mangroves (salties, crocs, are not known in NC, so it makes my mind more comfortable walking into a Mangrove, while in East-Timor I was going to think twice before walking into one).



What have we learnt about Mangroves?

Like many other things, civilization got it wrong with mangroves. New Caledonia has a lot of mangroves left and like any other place they are learning to balance between economical needs - short and mid term - and conservation - also with impact on mid-long term economic returns, but more important looking at the World wide effects of helping to conserve the mangroves ecosystem. As a coastal ecosystem mangroves are well suited to be a barrier for surge waves and tsunamis helping fight shore erosion. Evolved to live in a highly salty environment, they are in the fringe of salt and fresh water, hosting an ecosystem unique to them: from fishes to crabs and birds. They need fresh water and they grow in areas that have rivers and creeks reach the ocean in low tide coastal areas. The mangrove we visited have been almost cut down to make room for the view of a ... golf course! With negotiation now the owners of the golf course are helping to restore the mangroves, including opening creeks to make the fresh water run again across the mangrove and into the sea. The SOS Mangroves NC are learning with a lot of trials and errors how to replant them and gain the surface lost. Nothing that you can measure in quarters...





Visiting the mangroves next to the Tjibaou Cultural Center with the SOS Mangroves NC





Appreciating the mangroves in the North-East of the island, near Hienghene, exactly in the bay of Léwé







Learning to see and appreciate the mangroves re-growing in the Pierre Vernier promenade in Noumea.


Our daily routine

Any day, just after breakfast we decided which beach to visit, just go there, come back for lunch and repeat and rinse in the afternoon. The nature it is just there. And it is wild. Swimming from the shore in barely 1.5 meters deep was a showcase of flounders, stingrays and also turtles! Yes, turtles just there eating the seagrass and oblivious of the people swimming around them (we learnt that there are 7 species of turtles, and 4 are resident of New Caledonia! And all them in peril of extinction!). Fishes? Yes a lot, all the reef type, the variations for the sandy bottom and sea grass, including the sea stars and sea cucumbers.

In the little islands, islets, or ilôts, near Noumea, like Canard , Maître and the lighthouse of Amédée you can swim and snorkel over the corals, and it is a full aquarium including turtles swimming with the remoras, sea kraits and including some trevallies or mackarels (swimming a little further away). An aquarium full in motion and alive: we spotted a sea krait chasing small fishes, turtles with the attached remoras feeding on the sea grass, and also some medium size fishes feasting on schools of small fishes, and the seagulls taking also the chance. That was an amazing view in Isle de Pines, in the Kuto Bay: while the big fishes where chasing the school from below the seagulls were diving from above: frantic and frenzy activity just 2 meters from the shore, just when you stroll down the beach. Wild and No censored Nature in full!

In the evening during the goutee, and the adults having a beer, just relax and enjoyed the amazing sunsets...



















The List

A list of everything that we learnt looking around us, not complete, just for our ignorance and bad memory...

  • Birds: birds everywhere all the time
  • Turtles! Yes! Turtles almost every time they went snorkeling - just there: the turtles feeding on the sea grass, in the sandy bottom areas between the shore corals. And when diving...
  • Remoras sticked to turtles: apparently a common companion of the turtles almost all the time they spotted them, and also friends of the
  • Sharks! Including my youngest daughter, only certified to dive to 12 meters had the luck to see a white tip reef shark!
  • Sting Rays: many! mostly in the sandy bottom
  • Flat fishes: in the sandy bottom: hard to spot, but they are getting better at knowing where they hide
  • Sea Kraits, best known as tricot rayé in NC, and also sea snakes: the difference is that the tricot look like a coral with black and white bands, and the sea snakes have a greenish color, and not banded
  • Corals, anemones, sea grass, algae: all the ecosystem down there
  • and of course all the fishes that you see in the aquarium in the coral reef section, just there: Nemos and Dorys, and all the rest: it is just a busy town underwater

What are the rest?

New Caledonia seas and fresh water are home to thousands of marine species, many endemics of the area, and also due to the location, north-south layout, between the tropical and sub-tropical and template areas and the currents, you can spot many things from warmer and colder waters. All in the biggest lagoon worldwide. Not for nothing 2018 is the 10th birthday of this area nominated as a World Heritage.

Just jump or walk into the water and you can spot:

  • Many species of triggerfish
    • Several species of triggerfish
    • Clown, Picasso, Starry
  • Much more different species of Damselfishes, that you cannot count and differentiate them unless you are a specialist on that family!
  • Surgeonfishes, gobies, parrotfishes (humphead also!)
  • all type of Anemonefish, and wrasse and Blue-striped orange tamarin and blennies, Spotted sharpnose, butterflyfish, angelfish, razorfish, snapper, goatfish, unicornfish, Harlequin sweetlips, Moorish idol
  • Morays and sting rays and flounders (flat fishes: Emma and Eloisa good spotters of them in the sandy bottom)
  • several types of spuffers and trumpetfishes, the first usually swimming alone, the laters swimming in pairs or 3 at a time
  • big, really big groupers
  • lion fishes, several species

Out of the reef the pelagic ones

And the main attractions:


### References

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