Lapi in the Isles of Love

The guides find one attached low on the side of a silt covered dead coral head in the shallow waters of Kiriwina Bay. It is an unimpressive little oyster with the general aspect of a small black lip. But the valves are deeper. I'm not sure what species it is. My guides insist it is a Lapi.

Of the three guides, the youngest man is the best spoken. He stands on top of the big dead coral head and waves the Lapi at me, "Me little boy, oh many many Lapi here. My father he take many copra sac full up Lapi. Plenty Lapi." 

The four of us snorkel around the shallow rocks hunting for more Lapi. In an hour we pick up four.

"Lapi you find when you small boy, big like this?" I hold up my hands to show the size of a normal Black Lip.

"No. Lapi like this," He touches one of the small oysters. "All same small like this."

"You find pearls inside small Lapi like this?" I ask, surprised.

"Yes, plenty." He grins."Lapi come back we find plenty pearl. Now Lapi go."

Yeah, Lapi gone for good, I mumble to myself as I put the snorkel back in my mouth. 

Fisheries are odd. You can fish a species below a certain point and they won't recover. There are other things besides human predators to keep a population down and out. When the numbers drop below a certain point, competitors get the upper hand and presto, local extinction. Then, too, the people still pick up every Lapi they find on the off chance it might have a pearl in it so none of them get old enough or common enough to reproduce.

Maybe Lapi are a different species of oyster, or at least a different variety. They kind of look like Pinctada radiata but they have a blackish nacre and, if the reports are true, are much more prone to produce pearls than either P. margaritifera or P. radiata. Possibly because of their habit of living low on the sides of dead coral heads in silty environments.

I peer into the silty water of one coral patch and see a turtle crammed in there, sound asleep. I come up, take a breath, and snorkel down again to have a closer look at it. It wakes up and sculls water in a frantic attempt to escape. I think, "Don't worry little turtle, I won't hurt you." but before it reaches the surface one of my guides nails it right between the eyes with his spear.

I'm furious, but what can I say? To them a turtle is food. Period. On the way back to Moira they butcher the young turtle on a small beach of a small island. I get one quarter of the meat as is customary when men dive together. I don't refuse. I helped kill it. It would dishonor the turtle spirit, and mine, not to eat it. I accept the meat, thinking green turtles will, according to best scientific estimates, soon be extinct.

My guides show me a pile of Lapi shell left over from the days of the great pearl hunts. It's a small mountain of small shells, the same as the species we found today. Scrubby bushes have grown up around it. 

A monument to foolish greed.

Next we head for unchartered waters to see if there are any Lapi there.