Fanning Island's ship may have come in

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

Weekly cruise ship visits to Fanning Island are bringing big changes to the tiny atoll, including a booming cash economy, new immigration and the early stages of urbanization and environmental change.

The Norwegian Star cruise ship, top, which anchors off Fanning Island weekly, has brought many changes and the promise of prosperity. On a recent visit, above, it also gave children their first look at a helicopter, flown from the ship by David Chevalier of Maui. Norwegian Cruise Line

Before Norwegian Cruise Lines began regular visits to Fanning Island in December, the atoll was among the most isolated places in the world. Its 1,600 residents were served only by a monthly cargo ship and visited occasionally by sailboats and yachts. There still is no power grid or phone service. A small airstrip is overgrown and unused. The residents were mostly self-sufficient or employed by an old copra plantation and, later, in the commercial harvesting of seaweed.

Now, nearly 2,000 tourists aboard the cruise ship Norwegian Star visit the island for up to six hours each week, eager to stretch their legs after nearly two days at sea, eat and be entertained ashore, swim in the postcard-perfect lagoon and, especially, spend money. The ship visits Fanning to comply with a federal law requiring foreign-built ships to visit a foreign port between U.S. stops.

Dozens of residents have been employed by the cruise line, which has built a million-dollar visitor center on Fanning, and hundreds of others have rushed to set up handicraft businesses catering to the tourists. Cruise Line personnel have rented the biggest homes, built new accommodations for their employees, set up Fanning's first large-scale electric generators and flush toilets, donated thousands of dollars to improve the island's only school, and even brought the first-ever helicopter to the island to take aerial shots for promotion efforts around the world.

"Suddenly, it seems like everyone is interested in finding out about Fanning," Paupe said.

Norwegian chief executive Colin Veitch earlier this month told 800 people attending a "sustainability" workshop on board the ship while it was docked in Honolulu Harbor that the company strives to maintain a delicate balancing act on Fanning, bringing welcome economic benefits without damaging the local culture or environment.

"A ship like ours has an impact where it goes, even in Honolulu," he said. In a place like Fanning, the impact can appear magnified, he said.

So far, the changes on Fanning have been mostly economic. If there are going to be cultural and environmental changes, they'll come gradually, visitors and Pacific Island experts say.

"It's pretty amazing to see what's happened already," said Marion Kelly, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawai'i who visited Fanning several times as a child with her sea captain father and just returned from a cruise on the Norwegian Star. Kelly's great-grandfather started the copra plantation on Fanning.

"The first thing you see when you get off the ship is a beach covered with all these tiny little seats reserved for tourists," she said. "Then you get to the dock and find 50, 60, or maybe 70 tables with people sitting behind them, selling knickknacks and handicrafts made from local shells and plant materials. Everything is five dollars, American."

Some of the best handicrafts are necklaces made from thousands of tiny shells found on Fanning beaches, she said. "I cringed when I saw them. I was wondering how long it would take to collect all the shells and start having an effect on the lagoon."

Veitch said the island already is experiencing the early stages of a familiar Pacific problem: urbanization. Lured by reports of a booming economy, residents of poorer, even more isolated islands in the far-flung Kiribati Republic are trying to move to Fanning, he said.

"It's happened all over the Pacific for hundreds of years, even here in Honolulu," said Robert Kiste, who recently retired as head of the University of Hawai'i's Pacific Islands Program and took a similar job with the East-West Center. "If people have a chance to get involved with the West, they are going to do it. They'll opt for the cash and the convenience. Frankly, outer island life is boring."

Luciano Minerbi, a UH professor of urban planning who has written extensively about tourism in Pacific Islands, said Fanning residents will have to manage the coming changes carefully.

"A social contract needs to be worked out among the stakeholders," he said. "What the host population will be doing. What the tourist industry will be doing. What the tourist will be doing. What the government will be doing. What the environment will be doing."

The residents also need to pay attention to the many studies on the subject of tourism carrying capacity, both social and physical as well as ecological, that have been done in recent years, he said. "It just cannot be ignored anymore."

Paupe is confident Fanning residents will be able to keep their culture safe in the face of overwhelming economic changes.

"It's foolish to think the cruise ship isn't having much influence, but it's possible people are overreacting," he said. "It's not like they're building a U.S. military base down there, with bars and prostitution. Tourists are there for just a few hours and they're limited to a pavilion or walking through the village. That's not the kind of thing that's going to change a culture. Don't forget, these people have been exposed to the western culture for years and years through all the yachties who visited. The money is going to improve their life, but it won't really change the lifestyle."

Paupe is more worried about the cruise line someday abandoning Fanning as a regular stop.

"No one knows how long it's going to last," he said. "If the cruise line suddenly pulled out for whatever reason, the money would stop flowing on Fanning. That's going to have an impact."

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.