The Underwater Minerals Conference (UMC) has come to its conclusion. It was a great opportunity for the people to attend and ask questions and perhaps be better informed, especially those who wish to impose a moratorium on the research part, writes Michael Tavioni.

Unfortunately, those who needed to be more aware of what is going on did not wish to know any more than what they already know. When you decide to attack someone or something, you need to know as much as you can about your opponent in order to be able to plan your best strategy of attack. Not being well informed is not good for any undertaking.

My personal interest in the conference was the theory of the polymetallic nodules producing new oxygen molecules. The way I heard our ordinary people talk about this so-called ‘Dark Oxygen’ or whatever it might be interested me.

It seems they were led to believe that the oxygen we breathe is produced by the polymetallic nodules. After talking to some of the scientists who attended the conference, my suspicion was confirmed. There is oxygen everywhere – in the air, the water, the ocean, the stones, the nodules, the trees.

My interpretation is that because the polymetallic nodules are saturated with salt water, through some form of reaction oxygen is released. I am satisfied to know that the polymetallic nodules do not produce new molecules of oxygen. It stores some – the same as the sea, the stones, the air and the trees.

In the case of the trees and plants, they actually breathe in carbon dioxide and use it in the process of photosynthesis, therefore isolating oxygen from the carbon. This oxygen is then released back into the atmosphere for us to breathe.

But for me the ‘Dark Oxygen’ theory is mystifying. Under a tree one can feel the freshness of the air. It is always the best place to rest because under a tree oxygen is more plentiful – it releases the oxygen right there around itself before it spreads out into the atmosphere.

If the polymetallic nodules are releasing some oxygen, then it cannot be of any significance because they did not find an abundance of oxygen around the areas where the nodules are located. This suggests that whatever oxygen is released from the nodules is therefore not a major issue.

Anyway, if a nation with a strong military capability wished to come and take the nodules from our ocean, it could because it has the firepower to exert its wishes – we cannot stop it from happening. For example, colonised New Caledonia will not get its sovereignty back for a long time, because France wants and is taking the nickel and iron from that country.

Next, we shout ‘Save the ocean’. Is the ocean dying? Maybe. Is the ocean being polluted? Certainly. We know the ocean is being polluted and we should know who and what causes pollution. The status of the media today enables people to know about everything that is happening in the whole world every second of the day.

In our islands, do we really know or care to know what types and causes of pollution we create in our own backyard? Perhaps our own pollution is below our nose and therefore we cannot see it – or we choose not to see it. The best we can do is shout, ‘Save the ocean and the Earth’. Shouting is easy but that is all.

Our country does not have the equipment and the capacity to go out in the ocean and clean it up. As a matter of interest however, there are already organisations and people out there physically collecting garbage from the ocean. How long they can maintain that effort remains to be seen, because the people of the world continue to dump garbage into the ocean directly or indirectly. One example is the dumping of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific. It has already been happening and I do not see anyone jumping up and down? Japan in its own way is also a powerful country.

Our concern and effort to help keep the Earth healthy should be focused on our own pollution problems right under our noses. If we are genuinely concerned, then let us honestly investigate the types of pollution we now have and what caused them.

Around the 1950s to the late 1970s, agriculture was the backbone of the country. Our farmers copied the European ways of crop production. As a consequence, thousands of chemical fertilisers were imported and heavily applied to the soils and crops all around Rarotonga and most of the Southern Group islands. The idea was to get the maximum yield from the land.

The Cook Islands produced thousands of tonnes of bananas, pineapples, oranges, mandarins, lemons, tomatoes, copra and other produce for the New Zealand market. With the fertilisers, chemicals were also used to kill insects, fungus, weeds and so forth. After all this time, are there poisonous residues of these chemicals still in the soil of Rarotonga? On the other hand, is it possible that some of those chemicals are still running off into the ocean? Is there anyone interested in finding out?

Alongside the agriculture industry, there was the Island Foods canning factory in Takuvaine. During the time of its operations, all the waste was piped out to where the boiler is now. All that waste and pollution was instantly thrown back into what was then lagoon by the waves.

The Avarua lagoons at that time were covered with millions of mussels, healthy corals, an abundance of various seaweeds and many species of fish. The pollution from the canning factory killed all the mussels, killed all the seaweed and killed all the coral, except for the reef area where waves break, bringing fresh seawater with some necessary nutrients.

We also have garbage pollution amounting to many tonnes a day. Most of that can be recycled if the interest is genuine and the resources made available.

Then we have vehicle pollution. On Rarotonga we have thousands of cars, trucks, motorbikes, etc. These machines produce so many toxins per kilometre and at least 80 per cent of that is colourless and odourless. It’s out of sight and so out of mind. I know motor vehicles are part of family life though, so I suppose for the moment nobody is going to do anything about it.

Finally, hotels and tourist facilities. These are concentrated around coastal areas. The pollution coming out of these places cannot go uphill. It sinks to the water table, which is the same depth as the high-water mark of the sea, and naturally these toxins flow towards the sea. Parts of our lagoons are already polluted – the seaweed died, the coral died, and the fish do not return.

Being human, we choose what we want to complain about and we cover up what we do not want to be discussed.

• Mitaera Ngatae Teatuakaro Michael Tavioni BEM is a Cook Islands artist and writer. Tavioni has authored a booklet titled “Swim or Sink”, exploring the potential of polymetallic nodules as a substantial revenue stream for the Cook Islands. The views expressed in this article are his and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.