A HUMAN ADVENTURE
25,000 km at the very heart of the world’s largest ocean,
22 destinations, from Indonesia and Australia to French Polynesia and Hawaii
8 months of VAKA building time, 15 months of expedition
Start of the MOANA NUI Odyssey: May 2023
Christophe Mercier – founder of the MOANA NUI project
OUR CHALLENGE :
CROSSING THE PACIFIC
WITH THE LAST MASTER NAVIGATORS OF THE GREAT OCEAN
following the stars, winds, currents and the marine fauna
The MOANA NUI Odyssey is also a maritime challenge : to cross the world’s largest ocean, without maps or GPS.
And to re-live the incredible multi-millennial feat of these early adventurers who, living in total symbiosis with Nature, were able to explore and then inhabit MOANA NUI, their Mother Ocean.
Their navigational skills were based on their intimate knowledge of environmental elements, such as winds, current variations, the path of the Sun and stars, clouds, the colour of the water and the migratory movements of marine and bird life.
This knowledge has been passed down over generations, over thousands of years.
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Nowadays, a few lineages of Polynesian “Master Navigators”, dating back to the dawn of time, still exist in the Pacific, but their knowledge is disappearing.
The Odyssey MOANA NUI will welcome these last great “Master-Navigators” on board, so that they can guide our VAKA in the heart of the Pacific, and throughout our adventure, without any other help than their immemorial knowledge.
Interview with Tua Pittman (Cook Islands), Tulano Toloa (Tokelau Islands) and Larry Raigetal (Micronesia): 3 of the last great traditional Oceanian Master Navigators who will guide the MOANA NUI Odyssey into the heart of the Pacific.
Tua Pittman from the Cook Islands, Tulano Toloa from the Tokelau Islands in northern Samoa, Larry Raigetal from Micronesia, and traditional Hawaiian navigators such as the most renowned of them all, Nainoa Thompson and his students, will take up this challenge:
To relive in experimental archaeology, with MOANA NUI, the expansion of Homo Sapiens in the heart of the Pacific !
Christophe Mercier – Founder of the MOANA NUI project
.Life on board these ancestral VAKAs will be a challenge of experimental archaeology, bringing the crews closer to a kind of symbiosis with Nature that characterised the everyday life of the first peoples of the Pacific.
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AN INITIATORY ADVENTURE :
At sea as well as on land, rediscover the ecological way of life
of the ancient peoples of the Pacific ocean.
The traditional Polynesian knowledge of navigation is the “tip of the iceberg”.
It is an integral part of the environmental knowledges of the ancient Pacific peoples.
In those ancient times, when a new land was to be found, 5-6 intrepid navigators were sent to ‘scout’… Once the island was approached, these same Master Navigators became ‘ancestral ecologists’, who had to carry out a true ‘environmental audit’ of this new land, in order to assess its viability for the installation of a human settlement.
These knowledges were then used by the communities to make these environments sustainable for humans.
Interview with some of the participants of MOANA NUI Odyssey: Sandra Bessudo (Malpelo marine sanctuary), Guillaume Nery (world champion in freediving), Léa Brassy (adventurer, surfer), Eve Isambourg (“Youth for Climate and Oceans” at the UN).
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With MOANA NUI, both at sea and on land, we will be immersed in the traditions and ecological knowledges of the Pacific.
From remote island environments to the open ocean, we will learn from our Oceanic mentors, navigators, master fishermen, and Tahuna (traditional environmental knowledges bearers) how to live (not survive!) in harmony with the ocean.
Traditional fishing, going along with all its techniques, rules and rituals : we have to find back these ways of preserving resources and respecting the environment.
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A salutary shock, a complete immersion awaits us : a clash of cultures, a clash between modernity and immemorial knowledges…
Sailing aboard these legendary VAKAs, using ancestral methods, approaching each distant land as the first ancestral explorers did, identifying the nourishing capacities of these islands and lagoons, making them rapidly viable for man, while learning to live with the predators and the fury of the Ocean…
Aboard the Vakas, exploring the islands or even under the sea, the MOANA NUI human adventure will be multiform.
This initiatory experience will allow us to better understand, and literally “incarnate” the Pacific – this symbol ocean – and its issues.
From the MOANA NUI’s eco-sites to the marine protected areas, we will carry these knowledges and this “Spirit of the Navigator”, this soul – the Polynesian’s famous Mana – acquired throughout this experience.
MOANA NUI will teach us to live with and through the Ocean.
If we go back far enough, we can see that we all descend from traditions and cultures that were very close to Nature. And now we need to find that again, but in a new way. This is exactly where the MOANA NUI project will be really powerful.
Aulani Wilhelm, Senior Vice President, Center for Oceans, Hawaii, MOANA NUI Strategy Committee
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BRINGING CULTURES AND GENERATIONS TOGETHER, FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
There is a gap between the cultures and lifestyles of Oceanians / Polynesians and those of Westerners.
Westerners are surrounded by a predominantly ‘solid’ universe, whereas Oceanians live in a predominantly liquid universe.
A simple consultation of Google Earth Earth will convince you of this.
However the oceans are a common good, on which the survival of all of us as a human species relies.
It is only together, across our cultural and geographical differences, that we can develop effective strategies to protect the oceans.
Some will bring the undeniable advances of science and its tools, while others will bring their ecological knowledges, based on thousands of years of trial and error, whose effectiveness is no longer in doubt.
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Different cultures will have to come together and collaborate, as will generations: the elders, bearers of knowledges and experiences, with the younger generations, increasingly responsible and aware of the need to preserve our planet as a whole.
Through its environmental component and its initiatory immersion, MOANA NUI will strongly contribute to this transcultural and transgenerational collaboration.
MOANA NUI will be a catalyst for all these forces and wills, beyond space, cultures and generations, for a more sustainable future and oceans.