Moving to the Beat of a Marine Environment

Going to the beach of the Great Landing (Fanga lahi) in the early morning to ‘inspect the sea’ (fakasio e tahi) was a common routine on Kotu. Finding out whether the tide was flowing or ebbing made it possible to form an opinion about what things would happen in the immediate future and was therefore important for planning the activities of the day. That marine realities should be important to people living on a small piece of low-lying land set in a large lagoon surrounded by the deep sea of the South Pacific should not be surprising. Still, I noticed