Vaka to sail on awareness voyage The Cook Islands Voyaging - TopicsExpress

Vaka to sail on awareness voyage The Cook Islands Voyaging Society has announced vaka Marumaru Atua will be participating in a voyage to Australia to raise awareness of regional issues at an upcoming conference. Marumaru Atua – a replica of a traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe – is scheduled to take part in the ‘Mua: Guided by Nature’ voyage to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Worlds Park Congress in Sydney, which will be held in November. According to current plans posted on Facebook by Pacific Voyagers Cook Islands, the vaka is expected to depart Rarotonga on September 16 for Samoa, where it will join the Gaualofa – a Samoan traditional voyaging canoe. Together, they will then be moving on to Fiji to join the nation’s flagship vaka, Uto Ni Yalo. “The team from IUCN in conjunction with the Fijian Voyaging Societys Uto Ni Yalo Trust has a team working full time planning the logistics of each leg of the journey and funding the voyage,” reads the group’s Facebook post. “This significant voyage will convey regional messages about the critical need to respect and protect important natural places and continues the Pacific Voyage: One Pacific Voice campaign, originally initiated by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. “The aim is for the canoes to sail under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and put the Pacific issues on the map and highlight the message from the Pacific. The message is, climate change, and healthy oceans,” the group says. According to the IUCN, voyaging societies from New Zealand and Tonga are also participating. The vakas on the ‘Mua: Guided by Nature’ voyage – ‘Mua’ meaning to journey or travel in a certain direction and also referring to the bow of a canoe – will be continuing to Vanuatu and the eastern coastline of Australia, with canoes joining in throughout the voyage. Organisers hope to have the world’s attention when the fleet is scheduled to sail into Sydney Harbour on November 12 for the opening of the congress. “Conveying this ‘one Pacific voice’ to the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014 is critical, as the Congress – the landmark global forum on protected areas, held once every 10 years – is being held in Oceania for the first time,” says a release by the IUCN. “The Congress provides the opportunity to amplify the region’s call for an extraordinary commitment from the global community to manage the oceans for the benefit of all, and to demand greater action from the rest of the world to combat climate change.” The IUCN Congress takes place in Sydney from November 12-19