In 1780, an English vessel was sailing along the coast of Jamaica and
ran aground in a sea of green turtles, millions of turtles. For a time,
human beings were stopped by the sea of turtles waiting for their
inevitable return to the beach to forge the next generation.
Such an abundance of turtles. Their heads are breaking the sea’s
surface. Imagine the smell of turtles out beyond the horizon. Imagine
the coral of the reefs blooming colors. Big fish swimming. The explosion
of marine life exists along a changing depth of blue hue, under a full
moon sky that exists even before the sun sets.
Today, along the most of the beaches where green sea turtles once
gathered, there is a silence, a silenced sea. The British Empire mined
the beaches, coastal inlets, and lagoons for the sea turtles of the
greater Caribbean Isles. The turtle was a major export to England and
Europe in the 19th Century. Our museums are full of the large shells of
sea turtles; our western fables tell the stories of the
once-upon-a-time maritime abundance and bounty of sea turtles (in turtle
soup). In maritime museums, the turtle’s shell represents a
soon-to-be-lost race of marine life. Shells so large you can crawl into
them. Great sea turtle shells are like a great palm tree or the wings
of an albatross casting a shadow along the coast.
Sharks follow the path of an albatross, and the path of sea turtles.
Wolves follow the raven to the herd of elk. The swordfish is the
maritime emblem of the Chumash; when they return and sail to Santa Cruz
Island, there is a carved abalone shell in the shape of the swordfish on
their tomol or canoe. The brown bear was followed by the children of
the Pleistocene; in ice, we followed the paths of the great bear and
settled what indigenous North Americans’ refer to as “turtle island.”
The green sea turtle is referred to as honu in Polynesian, and represents “a spirit of change.” Honu
is a spiritual and metaphoric guide that travels the world’s oceans; a
shared totemic emblem that symbolizes the diverse ways people and places
co-exist. The wildness is the ecological context in which honu’s
path takes place – it is the space that is not embraced or understood
by the Cartesian consciousness. It is a path that reflects a material
and conscious transcendence of Cartesian ways and habitats.
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