Jacob and I are staying on Gili Meno, the most "undeveloped" and slow paced of the three Gili Islands, which, an hour speedboat ride off the coast of Bali, are supposed to have Bali's best beaches. This is to be our only beach time of the trip, and we came to snorkel. As I was researching places on Bali to snorkel, I came across so many posts about the garbage in the water around Bali that I became very disheartened and decided to come all the way out to the Gilis. And it's beautiful here. The water is clear, the beaches are white, the sunsets are gorgeous, and there are no motorized vehicles allowed on the islands, which is a nice break from all of the exhaust fumes I have been inhaling for the last month.
And now for the underbelly of all that: the only way to get around the islands without using your own body power is to ride a horse drawn carriage.
Cute, right? The horses are often treated very badly and not given fresh water to drink all day in the very hot temperatures. When I first stepped out onto one of the white beaches, I was shocked to see that most of it is not sand, but instead an endless expanse of bleached, dead, broken coral. I wanted to understand how there could be so much broken coral on the beaches, so I turned to Google. The only thing I could find in blogs was people complaining that the broken coral made walking on the beaches unpleasant. I am so sorry that it is uncomfortable to walk barefoot on a boneyard of destroyed ecosystem.
Seemingly endless destruction
My breaking point was when we went out snorkeling this morning to see sea turtles. We were told to snorkel out past the coral reef to reach turtles. Jacob and I spent a long time swimming along the reef trying to find a channel through because the water was a little too low to swim over it. In that time, I watched other snorkelers simply stand up and walk across the coral, and I watched boats full of tourists ride right over the top of the coral, definitely scraping it as they went. I was horrified, and began thinking that all the shards of dead coral on the beach must be from the complete lack of protection or understanding of the reef. By the time we finally got through to the other side and could start looking for turtles, I wasn't sure I even wanted to see any. Here's the thing about the coral that's still in the water - most of it is already dead. You can see small patches of color, pinks and bright orange and purples, but the majority of it is the same ashen grey-brown as the broken pieces littered across the shallow sea floor. Hundreds of thousands of years of coral growth is out there dead and fossilized. I don't see how the sea turtles can survive off the reef, and suspect that they mostly survive off of tourist boats feeding them. As I swam over what was essentially a graveyard and testament to human destruction, I had a pretty legitimate panic attack in the middle of the ocean. See, I travel for nature. I jungle trek and snorkel and be an eco tourist all over the world, but I generally travel to already heavily protected areas where the government and most locals are working to preserve the land and its inhabitants. Because of this, I've been pretty sheltered from physically seeing actual environmental devastation. I read the articles and watch the videos and donate money and sign petitions and buy the electric car and stop eating the animals, but I rarely so truly and viscerally feel the depth and breadth of what we have done to this earth. Hence, tears in the middle of the ocean. Then, I climbed out of the ocean, released a young sea turtle into the wild at the sea turtle sanctuary, feeling mildly pessimistic about his future, and went back to my precious google to see what is being done about the reef and how I could help.
Walking our turtles down the beach to "freedom"
These turtles are raised in captivity until they are 8 months old, the hope being that they are now big enough to survive in their depleted and ever more dangerous natural habitat.
I found out a whole lot. Much of the destruction of the reef was caused by fishing with dynamite, and continued bleaching is caused by warming water temperatures and strong storms from climate change. Horses on the islands only end up living a few years because of their treatment. There are a couple of really active NGOs working on the Gilis to help educate locals and tourists alike, protect the reef, care for the horses, deal with waste management (to stop the practice of burning garbage), spay and neuter island cats, and everything in between. Their work is extremely important and they will be receiving my financial support, but it needs to be bigger. The Indonesian government needs to step in all over the country to protect the environment and change infrastructure, and they need support from countries who are in the way to figuring this stuff out. In all my travels here, so many of the people were very eager to know our impressions of Indonesia and know how to make visitors want to come to them. Many strive to become "more like the US" and "a superpower," but they need the information and resources to deal with their growth. Indonesia is the 4th most populated country in the world and one of the world's largest CO2 polluters, but they've also joined the Paris Climate Agreement and pledged to cut 29-41% of emissions by 2030 (as opposed to our current commitment to back out of the Paris Agreement). Now that I have such a strong connection to this country, it's important to me to follow closely how Indonesia is doing in this commitment, what support they are receiving, and to talk to my school connections about what additional support they feel they need.
Looks great on the outside for tourists, but as tourists we have a responsibility to care about what's happening underneath
For those interested in the state of the Gili Islands and what's being done, here are some links: On a technology being used to regrow coral: http://trawangandive.com/diving-and-courses-at-trawangan-dive-gili-trawangan/trawangan-dive-reef-restoration-program-on-gili-trawangan-lombok-indonesia.html On the NGO Gili EcoTrust: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gili_Eco_Trust