Having seen dead coral, I decide to take a diving trip to Kelso, one
of the outer reefs that has recovered from the little bleaching it did suf-
fer in 1998. It is nice to be in a living aquarium again, with big coral
walls, bommies (coral heads), and canyons littered with fish; lumines-
cent chromies, coral trout, bat fish, rainbow-hued parrots munching
coral and pooting sand; and the usual clown fish hiding in the arms of
purple-tipped anemones, waiting for someone to take their picture. I
spot a giant clam about 6 feet across, looking like a living boulder, also
a big lobster hiding under a shelf. There are purple sea stars and cush-
ionlike sea cucumbers, trigger, trumpet, red emperor, and unicorn
fish, and lots of bright juvenile fry hugging the reef for protection. A
black-tip reef shark cruises past, adding a dash of predatory grace to the
mystery and magic of this healthy reef.
“Ours is a large reef region, more robust than the Florida Keys or
the Caribbean with more than 420 species of corals, six to seven times
as diverse as your Atlantic reefs,” Hough explains to me.
“What does that mean in terms of long-term projections?” I wonder.
“Larger diverse communities [like the Great Barrier Reef ] will last
longer,” he says, “but North America is going to get hammered.”
Not a happy thought for Billy Causey or anyone else who loves the
Keys.
SINKINGFIJI
From Sydney, I catch a flight to Nadi on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu.
There I catch a second cross-island flight aboard a Twin-Otter prop
plane. There are six of us taking the night flight, including two ladies
in saris, as we fly over mountaintop clouds illuminated by star-span-
gled southern constellations.
In 1874, the kingdom of Fiji, known for its fierce cannibal war-
riors, became a British Crown colony. The following year a measles epi-
demic killed a quarter of the native Fijians. Sympathetic to their suf-
fering, Sir Arthur Gordon, the first colonial governor, forbade Fijians
from selling their lands or working as day laborers. British sugar
planters got around these restrictions by leasing land from the Fijians
and bringing in Indian laborers to work as indentured servants. When
134 David Helvarg