Day 44: 20231106 Monday November 6, 2023- Kuri Bay
We had to set an alarm to get us up because our Kuri Bay Excursion leaves the ship at 7:10am. The ship was working its way through an archipelago of small islands heading into Kuri Bay. This is still in the Kimberly Coast, but now more in the Indian Ocean and in Western Australia. The sky is still a bit hazy but there are few clouds. It’s still a surprise to open the balcony and get hit with a blast of hot humid air. Even at 6:30am, it is 87˚F and 76% humidity.
We had received notices from the ship’s excursions department warning passengers that going ashore will be strenuous as there will be heat, humidity, irregular and loose footing on the trails and no air conditioning. The warnings seemed to have the intended effect because as we cued up in the dining room for the tender service ashore, there were no walkers or wheel chairs, and most people appeared at least independently mobile and fit enough to get up a flight of stairs.
The tender ride was quite short- less than 10 minutes. The tides in Kuri Bay are quite extreme so the floating dock is very long to be able to reach water deep enough for work boats at all tides. There are mangroves growing around the periphery of the bay while the surrounding hill sides are eroding limestone and basalt cliffs of dramatic orange, white and black tones. Fat trunked baobab trees are the most noticeable oddity in the flora of the area that we have not seen much of earlier in this trip outside of botanical gardens. These are natural here.
The dock at Kuri Bay serves a commercial Pearl farming operation. There is a collection of buildings including residential dormitories and various work sheds for supporting the pearl oyster farm. We learned that the oysters in Kuri Bay and the immediate surrounding area are unique in being able to produce large and flawless pearls. They do not breed the oysters, but rather, highly trained Japanese divers scour the ocean floor to harvest suitable oysters, which are then surgically seeded and then grown in cages suspended on lines from floats for 2 years to produce the pearls.
Each oyster may be capable of producing 2 pearls sequentially in its life span. When the first pearl is harvested, the sac that the pearl is harvested from can be re-seeded once. The Oyster meat and shells are by products of the pearl culturing. The only part of the meat they use is the main shell closing muscle, which looks like a scallop. The gut and mantle are processed into animal feed or fertilizer while the mother of pearl shells are used for buttons and watch faces. This farm produces some of the largest and most expensive pearls in the world. Many go to Japan as Mikimoto pearls.
The geopolitics of the operation are interesting. The land belongs to the aboriginal tribes. The Japanese discovered the oysters and have the knowledge and skill to culture the pearls. The Australians administer the land, and Americans finance things so the operation is multinational. Aussies provide a lot of the shoreside labor and logistics, while the Japanese do all the diving and aquaculture aspects of the operation.
There wasn’t a lot to the corrugated steel buildings of note, other than the lack of air conditioning and an above ground pool and bar for the employees and a cyclone shelter which consisted of a pair of shipping containers bolted to concrete blocks embedded into the earth.
There is a rough trail that leads up a ridge to a view point of the bay where we could see the bay and our ship, as well as the Mallard amphibious turboprop airplane that was giving passengers rides 6 at a time for $469 each.
There were guides both in front and in back of each group keeping an eye on everyone’s progress, and they took it slowly so nobody had trouble getting to the top and then back. There was a short demonstration of a kill harvest to explain the pearl culturing process and we saw how they let the oyster muscles relax naturally, then slip a special set of pliers into the gap between the shells to be able to open them without killing them.
It was interesting and the hike wasn’t as bad as advertised, so we felt the excursion was worthwhile, but boy were we soaked with sweat from the heat and humidity when we finally got back to our air conditioned stateroom. We napped and then got on our bathing suits for a pool side morning and lunch.
Afternoon trivia was not part of the progressive series since this was a port of call day, but we did manage to win settling a 3 way tie with the tie breaker of how many episodes of Hercules Poirot staring David Suchet are there? Closest without going over wins. We guessed 60 while the two other teams tied for first guessed 34 and 85. The answer was 70. We got coasters for that.
We rushed through dinner because one of our progressive trivia partners, Mick, is really good at music trivia and wanted to do the British Rock Trivia before his dinner. We contributed maybe one answer, but could positively reinforce at least some of his answers. We certainly would have bombed if it weren’t for Mick’s passion in music, and thanks to him we had another trivia win- this time earning string bags. From there, we did a Who, What, Where trivia which we lost largely because none of us recognized the skyline of Oslo Norway, and that was a 3 pt question. But the prize was a bottle of sparkling wine, so no big loss there.
We finished up the evening dropping in on a new hypnotist Matt Hale. We’re not sure why they would have more than one hypnotist on any cruise, but noticed some of the volunteers on stage were the same people who had volunteered for the last hypnotist. Aside from perhaps flashier 80’s music, it was pretty much the same experience as the last hypnotist show with people making animal sounds, flailing their arms and doing other stupid things on stage.
Tomorrow we arrive Broom. This is a larger town built around the cultured pearl industry but it has a pier and real city with museums, shops and beaches so it’ll be quite a different experience than the remoteness of Kuri bay.
