In Angola the sole purpose of diving was to spear fish. I never took the time to admire the underwater scenery and therefore when people asked me how was Angola underwater I could hardly describe it. My only recollections were of large rock cods, snappers and other fish that abundantly populate the waters of Angola.
When I arrived in Nauru and for the first time had a look at a coral reef I decided that I will not commit the same mistake. My diving expeditions in Nauru were to observe the reef, the marine life and try to capture their beauty through underwater photography.
As the photographic material piled up, I started thinking about sharing my experiences with people that could not dive and my dives became more structured. I started a database recording the relevant information for each dive such as the location and what I saw. Slowly I also started mapping up the topography of the reef and the corals in it.
After almost 500 dives I had plenty information about the underwater world of Nauru. One day, a team of Paris University made a stopover on the island on the way to Noumea. They asked to be accompanied on a series of dives and being the president of the Dive Club I took them on a couple of dives. In conversation with them they told me how special the Nauru reef was: it was a rock raising over 500 meters from the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of the Pacific, with no shallow waters and no other land nearby. They also told me how very little was known about the reef.
I decided then that I should attempt to write a book about the underwater world of Nauru. I already had lots of material and started putting it all together in a book form. In one of our trips to Europe I inquired in Hong Kong about the cost of publishing the book and was not impressed with it. I did not think that my book was going to be a bestseller and I could see myself with a garage full of unsold books and a dent in my bank account.
I talked with my Dive Club friends and we agreed that an exposition would probably be of interest to the people of Nauru. We needed funds to cover the costs of the exercise and we contacted the various businesses in Nauru and found sufficient interest to sponsor the idea. Each display board was sponsored by a Nauru business.
We assembled a team of Dive Club members and started working very hard organising the exposition. The EXPO 85 was open by the President of Nauru and the reception we got from the population was overwhelming. For two weeks the EXPO was open to the public and I suspect that everyone in Nauru visited it at least once. The display boards and the corals displayed in exhibitor boxes were of very high standards and were highly praised by the visitors.
The exposition generated a large amount of photographic material and coral specimens and we thought it would be of interested for Nauru to set it as a permanent display of the reef. We donated the entire content of the exposition to Nauru but it was very sad and disappointing that it was not accepted.
Today I still have a huge pile of very large photographs in my garage and every time I do a clean-up I think about chuck it in the rubbish but have not had the courage to do it yet.
Unfortunately I cannot find any photos of the opening ceremony or the EXPO. The photos below show some of the work of preparing the displays boards.
