(14 August 88) There’s a dugong about seven feet long that sometimes, at night, lines up and hangs out next to Yokohama Pier. It just lays there, doing nothing. A dugong is known as a manatee in Florida and if you see either one you’ll have no doubt what it is – basically a slow-moving blob with a broad flat tail. These creatures are harmless and eat plants. The only problem is I can’t find any reference for them in this part of the world. The closest one I know of is in Vanuatu, south of here and north of Australia.They live in warm coastal waters and eat sea grass. They can grow to around 10 feet and weigh up to 500 pounds. There aren’t many left in the world because they are slow and have no defense system. They just drift along in the fast lane.
Into the jungle area a hundred yards east of the pier and the now collapsed Japanese torpedo loading dock is a small building that houses the Roi Yacht Club. On the south wall is a painting of an island beauty in nothing but a grass skirt. She seems lost in thought as she combs her lustrous long black hair.
I walked along the seawall and came to a picnic table on which someone had left a ten-pound bag of unshelled peanuts. A coconut crab of medium size had torn the bag open and was cracking each peanut, eating the nuts and discarding the shells. Coconut crabs are called robber crabs since they will take anything, including metal eating utensils, and haul them off to their burrows. But this medium sized night owl was quite content to remain seated on its good fortune and crack each shell one at a time.
I drove down to Sally Point, which is near the reef’s edge, heading south. It’s a half mile north of Ennugarret on the east reef. I like to park here and catch the night breeze. When a full moon is out and it dips below the palm fronds, I look across the lagoon and it’s like taking a shot of morphine. I can’t stay more than a few minutes or my eyelids will feel as though they weigh a pound each. This is an anger free zone. (Click to enlarge image. Click again for full screen.)
Out in the road next to a bomb-damaged Japanese bunker fifty yards north of Sally Point I stopped to observe a large brown coconut crab. While it held a coconut steady with one of its outer appendages, the larger of the two claws would strike the husk and pull back, scraping off a thin layer.
After a few minutes only a small area of the husk had lost a thin layer of the covering. At this rate it would be days before the nut was freed.
The crab became annoyed at my presence and made for the bushes. Those reports I’ve heard about coconut crabs being able to crack the coconuts with their powerful claws are a slight exaggeration. They have to put in a lot of work to be successful. But as one former employee knows, they do produce a lot of pain when they grab you by the shoulder and squeeze.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 3
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