When I was a child, my father used to take us fishing. As a Bangladeshi immigrant, he had a nostalgia for things that reminded him of home. And this included fish. He was passionate about them — from catching them to eating them to examining the shining quality of their eyeballs at the market to determine their freshness. Dad’s face would light up at seeing a whole fish, whether on the Discovery Channel or in the supermarket. I suppose I inherited a bit of that spirit too, one that would show up in my adulthood as a surfer and traveler.

This time, I was headed back to a tiny island off the Northwest coast of Fiji. It was so small you could walk around it in 20 minutes. I had spent some time there whilst on my nonprofit sabbatical the year prior, and managed to return for some needed respite and waves.

After landing in Nadi, I boarded an open bow, longboat taxi that would transport me and another surfer out to the tiny island for our stay. Fiji had just been hit with a cyclone in the days prior, and so the ocean was wild that day. The chop of the water formed waves that collided with our boat, as if creating a ramp for our boat to swerve upward on the crest, only to come crashing down a few feet on the other side as our butts slightly flew off the built-in plastic benches. Though it was just another day at sea for the boatman, I hung onto the sides for dear life, as he nonchalantly maneuvered us through the chaotic sea until we reached the island.

The island was tiny and naked next to the vastness of the ocean. Its sandy edges bled into once crystal clear, shallow waters, which turned a murky emerald green before bleeding into deep blue the further you looked out to sea.

There were patches of palm trees and other greenery concentrated to one side of the island. A few feet up from the water’s edge, there was a bar and kitchen, which opened into a patio area with a few round tables and a small pool.

Looking out towards the ocean, there was a series of waves breaking a few hundred feet past a bed of turquoise and blue reefs. Pulses of water collided with the reef, forming a wave that crested and slowly crumbled from left to right as the white water moved slowly to devour the face of the wave.

As I walked up to the patio area of the island from the beach, I was greeted by the joyful smiles of the local Fijians, some of who were friends from my last trip. A smiling, young man came up to me, and leaned towards me to ask if I wanted to go into the bushes with him. Unsure what this meant, I smiled awkwardly and with a nervous giggle, politely declined. I mentioned the strange interaction to our host to which he replied, “Oh? He said that, did he?” Upon inquiring further, I understood going into the bushes was a direct invitation to “get it on.” I was surprised one would be that forward to someone having spent less than five minutes on the island.

Although I came to surf, it wasn’t always possible due to the unpredictable nature of the ocean. On one particular morning, the waves didn’t look so great. So I decided to invoke the spirits of my half-Bengali ancestry and try my hand at fishing. For me, it’s the next best thing to do when one is out of waves.

Docked several yards away from the shore was a medium-sized, white fishing boat that had three long poles jutting out from its stern. They were massive in comparison to the modest, small, pink and brown fishing pole my father gave me as a girl. The boat was operated by a 20-something, stocky Australian guy named James. James was a soft-spoken guy, had shoulder length, dirty blond hair, and a stocky build. He always wore a sleeveless T-shirt. There were a few others on our crew that day, including an Ozzie photographer who worked as a volunteer on the island, and two other traveling surfer dudes from Southern California.

That morning, we set out on the fishing boat to sea. As our boat got further out to sea, the tiny island slowly faded in the background. Soon, we had nothing but a horizon line to stare into on all sides that separated the navy blue of the sea from the baby blue sky.

The steering wheel of the boat was located between two fat, metal poles that held up a white, awning-type cover for shade. A GPS system and screen were showing what looked like maps of the reef below, and a tracker of where our boat was in relation to them. Despite all the gadgets and maps, the strategy to finding the fish relied on our human capabilities. It had to do with birdwatching. Where there are birds, there are fish.

Now scouring for flying birds, we moved through the ocean as our boat slapped and sprayed against the small ripples and waves, and the winds blew into our faces and cooled us from the beating sun. It felt invigorating, bumping up and down on the surface of the sea as I looked out cautiously, secretly hoping I would not get seasick from the ride.

After some time, we spotted a large, noisy flock of sea birds. Flying chaotically in circles just above the water, they catapulted themselves into the ocean, like an Olympic diver to a swimming pool. They surfaced moments later, with silvery fish flopping halfway out of their mouths.

James slowed the boat until the motor lowered to a modest rumble to observe the scene further. He decided there was enough of a feeding frenzy to warrant good potential fishing waters. So we started to ready up our poles in preparation.

My pole had a black handle covered with a layer of black neoprene. The tip of the line had fake bait made up of pink rubber tassels that looked like strips of pink licorice from a candy store. It was supposed to mimic a squid, a far cry from the brown worms my brother and I used to dig up from our yard as fishing bait when we were kids.

I gripped the bottom of my pole with my left hand and with my other hand, released the bail to let the fishing line come loose. I held on to its slack with my right hand so it wouldn’t run, swung the lanky pole back over my right shoulder, and then cast it forward in front of me towards the sea. The spool below the orange cartridge rotated rapidly as my bait and weights flew through the air, plopping into the ocean. I secured the bail, and slowly reeled the line back in towards me.

This act of doing something over and over again while adjusting with my knees to the gentle up-and-down pulses of the sea from the boat floor had somewhat of a meditative effect on me, as did looking out and seeing only the simplicity of a straight horizon line.

Moving my gaze away from the horizon, I noticed where my fishing line met the water, and the ripple and pattern it would make when I’d reel it in a bit. Focusing intently on these seemingly simple elements, I felt for subtle tugs on my line as I gradually reeled it in before another cycle of casting.

The guys were relatively quiet, as we cast out our lines and patiently waited for any hint of life below that might fall for our bait. And despite being the only female on the boat, I was 100% comfortable with my male fishing compadres.

Amid our meditative ritual, requiring us to focus and flow to the pulse of the sea, I suddenly felt a tug on my line.

To test if it was a bite, I pulled the pole upwards and toward me to examine the resistance. The tip of my pole started to bend slightly into an arc. I did this a few times and the resistance stayed. “I think I got something!” I exclaimed.

James rushed over to inspect. The other guys looked on, fixated on what might be below. And in that instant, our meditative fishing flow slowly transformed into the likes of a nautical maternity ward.

“Release the line,” James said to me calmly.

“Why?” I asked, perplexed.

“If you release the line, the fish will swim against the drag and get tired out. It will be easier to reel it in,” he explained. I released the line to let it run for a bit. I then secured the line and reeled it back in. I released then reeled it, over and over again like a corporate litigator purposefully dragging out a case to tire out and intimidate their tiny opponent.

I sat down on the edge of the boat to get a better grip on the pole. Even with lowering my center of gravity, the fish was strong. After some time, I began losing my leverage on the pole.
“Grab the belt,” James yelled. Belt? There’s a belt? Who knew? One of the guys then fastened a black nylon belt around my waist. It had a metal piece attached to rest the handle of my pole in, which tucked snugly into my belly. I inserted the handle in it, immediately gaining back leverage over the fish.

“Alright Farhana, keep reeling. You got this!” James, the fishing midwife, yelled as the weight of the pulls got more intense.

“Keep going, Farhana!” someone else yelled.

“This is getting haaarder,” I declared, now surrounded by my four nautical midwives, hovering on either side of me, with all eyes fixated on the water.

“I can see its head!” one of them shouted. It was silver and triangular. As I reeled it in, its large body and crescent-shaped tail thrashed violently from side to side in defense. Now, feeling more of the weight of the fish, James grabbed onto the pole to help me.

I reeled and pulled, with James by my side, as a giant fish with a 4-foot-long shimmering, silver-grey body and peacock green spinal scale emerged to face its cruel un-birth. Swinging it into the backside of the boat, it crashed to the floor, its body flapping and convulsing while oozing a trail of red blood that contrasted against the stark white boat floor. I then let out a deep breath.

“It’s a Wahoo!” someone shouted as if announcing the sex of a baby in a delivery room.

The boat exploded in congratulations at our collective victory at sea. A sense of pride filled the air, knowing we’d arrive back on the island, unembarrassed from our efforts. We continued to fish for a while after, but didn’t manage to catch anything more. And I, miraculously, didn’t manage to get sick in the process. We soon called it a morning and headed back to the island.
When we arrived, the staff approached our boat to see of the news of our journey, taking dibs on the head of the catch, the most coveted part of the fish for the Fijians who would soon turn it into a delicious soup. The fish was about 4 feet long and weighed in at 10 kg (22 lbs). It was the biggest fish I had ever caught.

While I felt valiant in my efforts to have un-birthed such a grand fish with the help of my seafaring doulas, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad and guilty over its violent fate. But fishing was part of my Bengali ancestry. It was a way my forefathers had fed themselves for generations. It’s something my father taught me. Surely it’s better than a meat factory, I reasoned with myself. For some reason, there was a bigger psychological weight for me in taking such a big fish from the sea.

Guilt and glory aside, I also felt as if I had gained some weird new insight by reuniting with my childhood fishing spirit as an adult woman. On the one hand, it is a dopamine-induced, male-dominated, big-game sport. On the other hand, it reminded me of the female act of birthing, minus the baby and minus the pain.

As I reflect on my maritime midwife memories from 13 years ago, I’m present to the words of friend and ocean scientist, the late Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, known as J. to most.

J. always used to say in his talks that we are taking too much out of the ocean, and we are putting too much into the ocean. It reminds me of the parallel universe in fishing, one that exists in stark contrast to my privileged brown girl fish tale, no pun intended.
I’m referring here to the parallel world of industrial fishing. Unlike my pole and line catch, industrial fishing uses a process called trawling to catch fish at a large scale. Ever see one of those bottom trawlers? It’s basically a net dragged just above or on the seabed. (See graphic below.) It not only disrupts and destroys marine ecosystems by sucking life up from the sea, it also has big impacts on the economic prosperity of local fishermen in areas of the Global South where many of these boats fish.

Take China, for instance. Many of their fishing boats can be found in waters off the coast of Global South nations like Sierra Leone. (Guardian) Their under-the-table fishing has disastrous consequences for the livelihoods of indigenous coastal fishing communities and economies.

For example, between 2010 and 2015, illegal and underreported fishing in West African waters resulted in an estimated total loss of $24.6 billion for these African nations. (Frontiers) This is a double whammy of environmental injustice. While Global North countries illegally deplete fishing supplies which disrupt the ocean’s natural carbon sink processes, they also compromise local fisheries and the livelihoods of those that depend on them.

These illegal fishing boats are also present in the South Pacific off the coast of islands like Fiji. While I was catching my one Wahoo, industrial fishing boats were taking much more. In many instances, marine authorities found these ships to be inaccurately recording their catches, and found the operations were rife with human rights abuses, from undocumented overtime to physical violence towards workers. (Climate News)

As the ocean absorbs roughly 80% of CO2 from our atmosphere, this type of extraction from our oceans also expands into our climate. While microalgae and seaweed absorb CO2, so do fish, altogether sequestering hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 per year. As we take too much from the sea, we reduce the ocean’s natural carbon sink capacity. On top of that, when we take too many fish from the ocean, we also increase carbon emissions as boats spend more fuel and time searching for less fish.

Today, climate science says we have to cut our emissions in half by 2030. From carbon-capturing technologies, to regenerative farming, to heeding direction from indigenous communities on how to have a more reciprocal relationship with nature, it feels like we’re sprinting to balance everything out.

Like illegal commercial fishing, we have taken too much, and now we’re being challenged to meet our extractive behaviors with reciprocal ones. Historic land backs, reparations, and acknowledgment of Indigenous erasure are just some examples of the fundamental rebalancing happening on our earth right now.

On a personal level, I believe there’s always a duality of forces at play, in ourselves, in nature and yes, even in big-game pole and line fishing with a bunch of dudes! I believe for any healthy ecosystem to thrive, these forces need to be balanced.

Perhaps we’re being called to embrace fundamental philosophies like Yin and Yang within our systems, policies, structures and ourselves as we move forward on earth. Perhaps in doing so, it’s also time we ask one fundamental question in all of our actions going forward to move us towards more balance. Namely, if we take from the earth, how will we give back to it?

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by my surf travels to Fiji in 2011 and shared to the best of my recollection. Names have been changed to respect privacy.

After 10 years of leading the nonprofit I founded, I was granted a sabbatical to take some time off and rest a bit from what felt like a decade-long sprint in nonprofit leadership. I craved being in a place where I could be anonymous, live simply and be in the natural world. I was deeply drawn to the South Pacific and her family of tiny islands or motus, as they are called in many Polynesian languages. My love of surfing and years of Polynesian dance study made me ever curious to visit.  Plus I had heard from a surfer I once met that Fiji was a place where you could take a boat out to the middle of the ocean and find bejeweled crested waves peeling over shadows of dark coral reef. For me the choice was easy - Fiji is where I’d start.
 
After spending my first week on a tiny outer island in the North small enough to walk across in 10 minutes, I decided to make my way South to a motu called Nagigia, just off the Western coast of an island called Kadavu, home to the largest producer of kava in all of Fiji. Stepping off the plane in Kadavu on the tarmac, I was surrounded by a deep bed of navy blue water that met a backdrop of brown mountain terrain covered in lush green rainforest. From there, I headed with a boatman to the island, a journey which exposed miles upon miles of coastal rock and deep beds of reef, with not a single stretch of white sand in sight.
 
Upon arrival to the island I noticed it was completely surrounded by reef and bordered by thick, dark green trees and plants giving it a mysterious feel. I was met by Leena, a bubbly, smiling, warm Fijian woman in her early 20’s and her team of various relatives from the nearby village. Leena showed me my bure and true to Fijian hospitality, made me feel right at home on this lush island as a guest of one.
 
From the island, I could see the King Kong surf break, named so because the 1976 remake of the original movie was filmed on Kadavu.  It presents as a mirage from afar as being fun!  But upon closer inspection, let’s just say you start to understand why they named it after King Kong. One day, I took a boat ride out to see it.  It looked like a sea monster rising from below, wanting to envelope you in a thick hug over a sharp, shallow reef. So I opted for the smaller surf break around the corner.
 
The smaller break was closer to land and broke in front of tree-covered land serving as a natural sea wall that dropped off into the ocean. Hopping off the boat, I noticed the tiny gathering of brown boulders in front of me, the dark shadows of corals below crystal clear waters and the view of the green mountain in the distance. The only one out, I noticed when a wave came, the water would suck off the reef, exposing an entire ecosystem of brilliant underwater life, from purple corals, royal blue starfish, to black, spiky sea urchins. Whereas the waves up North I had surfed were bigger and broke under a deeper bed of ocean, the waves over this reef were tiny and thinner in comparison, requiring a type of precision, care and lightness in order not to touch the reef.
 
After a rough first day trying to catch waves on a stiff longboard that only seemed to be resulting in me nose-diving on each take off, the next day I decided to change my strategy.  I’d try a smaller board. It can be a struggle to find a sweet spot of balance when surfing on an unfamiliar board. Despite the shakiness I felt with this board change, I was determined. This time, a bigger wave came, sucking up and leaving only a thin layer of water between the reef and myself. As I hopped to my feet, my eyes went straight to the fish on the reef rather than down the line of the wave where I should have been looking. I thought ‘wow look at that how clearly I can see that fish’ and ‘crap, if I wipe out there’s no water between me and the reef to land on’. (This thought happened in a millisecond but I’m giving you the slow-mo version that went on inside my head.) In my slight panic, I kicked off the wave, and tumbled below as I felt a bang on my leg. When I surfaced from the water and looked down to inspect, I had a line of blood oozing from my shin from my fin. And that’s pretty much how the start of Nagigia went – bleeding over baby waves on a reef.
 
Bummed at the injury, but grateful it wasn’t my head that was bleeding, I hopped back in the boat and Mareva, a woman who brought me out to the reef on the boat, steered us back to the island. Leena brought me some leaves of a local plant and suggested I put it on the cut but I opted instead for the triple antibiotic cream I brought with me, afraid it might get infected and that we were too far from any town or hospital to deal. Because I had an open wound, it was not a great idea to get back in the water. I wasn’t sure what else I’d do. After a quick e-mail of concern to the Australian tour operator, within days, Tim, a Fijian surfer and fisherman arrived as a guide.
 
Tim was a tall, solid man and introverted in his slow, thoughtful communications.  He gave a new meaning to the temperament chill. He went out one day to surf King Kong and came back with small, bloody gashes and scrapes on his back from hitting the reef. It didn’t phase him though. To Tim, it was just part of surfing. And yes, he did put the leaf stuff on his cuts. At the time, Tim also was the son-in-law of the King of Fiji, and seemed a perfect bridge in connecting guests to the local traditions and ways of the area.
 
Surfing was only one of Tim’s many talents. He was an experienced fisherman too. With Tim now on the island, we starting trolling in a boat searching for birds, catching yellow fin tuna, building fires from scratch to roast our fish on a remote motu, and going on hikes in the mountains to search for crabs as bait. It was a simple delight to be able to feel the pace of life and to have someone give me a peek into the incredible harmony of how the community of this region lived with the natural world.  And, I learned some interesting things about reef rights in this part of Fiji.  In Kadavu, local villages owned the rights of the reefs surrounding their villages.  So if you were wanting to fish on the reef, you’d have to dock your boat, pay a visit to the chief, do a kava ceremony together and then ask for permission to fish.  If you just go and cast a long line on the reef, there were men from the village who served as watchdogs who’d swim out and cut the line. So there was still a very old world etiquette around the ocean and reef rights in this region.
 
Tim and I were eventually joined by a few more visitors on the island and so I was no longer a guest of one, which was great. I did manage to catch a few waves. I paid a visit to the local village and their tailor who sized me up without taking one single measurement and sewed me a perfectly fitted skirt and top. To this day I am still in awe at her seamstress skills. Towards the end of my stay I managed to also get stung by a Portuguese Man of War jellyfish.  Then, a cyclone ended up ripping through the region, stranding us on the island and cancelling all flights out of Fiji. What I thought would be a surf adventure with food, surf, music and people ended up being a surprising immersion into a stunningly beautiful, traditional and remote part of the world, with humble people so welcoming to share. I was not a guest in some resort in remote Fiji; I was a guest in someone’s home.
 
As I share with you this trip from 14 years ago, I’m present to our record high ocean surface temperatures we’ve had this year resulting from the ocean absorbing 26% of the world’s carbon emissions. These emissions come mostly via fossil fuel use in energy and transportation. When I think about such a tiny place in the world as Nagigia, where people’s entire subsistence depends on their natural ecosystems, delicate reefs and minimal tourism, and where there were zero cars, climate change is an injustice to say the least.  Despite contributing the least in global emissions, it is these small island nations of the world that are the most vulnerable to climate change. Fiji has been the first of island nations to relocate an entire community due to rising sea levels and climate change, forcing communities to leave behind their ancestral lands. (Article)  Today, there is no tactic they can take like cutting fishing lines to protect their reefs when the threat is existential; the warming gasses are already spread in the air and throughout the sea.  How do they stop that?
 
I know our global target is to keep warming below 2°C, a target that would put many island nations under water. So the small island and developing nations led us to focus our target to 1.5°C instead, a global goal formalized in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Though the goal has been stated, it is of increasing concern by the world’s leading scientists that that is even realistic at all.
 
It makes me think how important it is to acknowledge our global impact on one another when it comes to climate.  Only when we expand our consciousness and are able to connect how actions of the global north impact the global south and ensure the communities most impacted have an equal voice at the decision tables will we be able to truly tackle climate change though a justice lens. And only when there is some level of accountability in impact of emissions on vulnerable nations will we have true justice.
 
We are now in an era where Mother Nature is requiring of us to not only clean up our pollution, but to realize how the choices we make, from transportation to materials design to the food we cultivate, impacts entire communities in the most remote parts of the world.  Perhaps what’s needed at the moment is a collective reframe of our presence on earth.  Maybe we need to consider ourselves all as just travelers here - temporary guests on this beautiful, big blue planet. If we have the ability to create such impacts in far off places of the world, what is our ability and role in reversing them?

The roosters aren’t silent,
Cock a doodle doo-ing in the village grass,
On an island in the outskirts of Southern Fiji,
The lady that sized me up and sewed the blue dress with the hibiscus flower print to my exact size,
Without. Taking. One. Measurement.
 
The sun hitting the green grassy pastures,
The wooden shacks for the chickens,
The church that was bright and sunny,
Where I met the woman there from Kandavu,
And she had on the same type of skirt the lady had sewn me.
 
Across to Samoa where the homes have no walls,
A bright pink sheet hung with clothing pegs dividing my room from the rest of the platform,
The fried reef fish Fanny’s relatives cooked, wondering if I should avoid eating it,
Lonely Planet said avoid all fresh reef fish because of the toxins.
 
This is what it looks like,
Driving to the kids’ school,
Their white shirts and red short uniforms,
I can only remember the last time I remembered,
Was it red shirts and white shorts?
Needing to be accompanied at all times in those parts,
Because a single woman cannot not be attached to a family unit.
 
This is what it looks like,
Back to Fiji,
Royal blue starfish off the reef,
Juxtaposed against our fuchsia kayak,
The island nights Tim provided,
The fishing we did in between,
Freshly caught Yellowfin tuna,
The Fijians calling dibs on the head and tail, the most coveted parts of the fish
Just like my dad,
Like true Bengalis they just know what’s good.
 
This is what it looks like,
A spire of green grass,
The cackle of a chicken,
Village huts,
Homes with no walls,
Seamstresses that can sew a perfectly fitted dress at the bat of an eye,
This is what it looks like,
To be in Old Polynesia.


Inspired from travels in 2010 & 2011 to Kandavu, Fiji and Savai'i, Samoa