Our Desert Island Home My Life

-Hi, I'm Luca.

-And I'm Felix.

-BOTH:

-Welcome to our island.

We live on this beautiful island in the middle of the South Pacific,

surrounded by coral reefs.

Having a lot of marine life around where we live is really fun.

I love swimming with the whales.

They come near to our island to have their calves.

Under the water is just an entirely different world.

But although it looks like the perfect place to live,

the island has just had its worst storm in over 100 years.

And our coral reef may be damaged.

-So how was it?

-There's not a lot of healthy coral.

'If nothing is done to save the reef,

'it and the wildlife that lives here could be destroyed.'

Because it eats all the algae, and has destroyed beautiful reefs.

Join us as we fight to protect our island home.

A piece of rubbish. They could just pick it up and put it in a bin.

We'll show you what life in a desert island is really all about.

This is the island of Fofoa,

our home and our own personal adventure playground.

My name is Luca. I'm ten years old.

I'm Felix. I'm 11,

and I live on an island in Tonga, which is in the South Pacific.

We have lived here for nine years, and it's full of wildlife,

such as colourful birds, sand crabs, lots of fish, whales, dolphins.

'I've got a few non-human friends on the island too.'

So, this is Robin.

I actually obviously don't know why they're called a sea hare,

because they actually should be called a hippopotamus slug.

They have a big nose, sort of same eyes.

When they feel threatened,

purple ink comes out from that hole there...

..which I don't want to demonstrate, because he's a good friend.

'Having a lot of marine life around where we live is really fun.

'And it's exciting, because things that you don't see a lot of,

'if you just walk along the reef, and then you see one and, yeah,

'that's something to do over there.

'There's never usually a usual day.

'There's no sort of routine that we have.'

We just see what looks fun on that day, and do it.

These leaves, which you can stick on your faces...

..and they'll stick.

We're here to see the local medicine cabinet.

These are both very good for cuts,

cos the Aloe Vera is good for cleaning out the cuts.

And then these, when you roll them up and crush them,

it's good for, like, healing cuts to make them grow over.

We don't have Wi-Fi, so mobiles and iPads aren't much use here.

We do a lot of stuff together as a family, playing games.

This is our dad, Boris.

We never fall out seriously in this game.

We tease each other, but no, no fall-outs.

That's our mum, Karen.

-Do you want to hit that one first?

-Oh, great.

CHEERING

And don't forget Lulu the dog.

We never trained her to hunt, erm...

fish, but she sort of just does it anyway for fun.

'As our family are the only people who live full-time on the island,

'we have to make our own fun.

'But that's not a problem for us.'

Most of the things we use, we've made.

These are probably one of the coolest toys that my dad has made.

We have showers, and we have the sea as a big bath.

But if we want, like, a bath bath, then this is sort of what we use.

Ah!

Just a seed.

So where one coconut goes, a coconut tree...

planted.

-Do you want to drink this?

-Yeah.

It doesn't taste like anything I know -

it just tastes like coconut water.

Sort of...

in between sweet and non-sweet.

-Felix, do you want to open that?

-Yeah.

Opening the coconut like that, he's using the blunt side of the knife.

It's not that dangerous that I've got a machete,

cos I know how to use one.

'But you have to be careful with it.'

Coconuts are great - coconuts give you everything, really.

Water, food, shelter, firewood.

Well, a whole house, really.

We built our house ourselves,

made from things that you can find on the island.

The home-made table - it's all made out of cedar.

And then all of these posts everywhere are all coconut wood,

all from our land.

This is our measuring pole.

Which is how...

well, tall we are.

That was me when we first started, and...

That's me when we first started.

But now...

We haven't done this yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm here.

Yeah, I'm around there at the 16th of May.

I was only 18 months when I moved here,

so this island and the stuff you can do here

is pretty much everything I know.

-RADIO:

-'Good morning, everyone.

'I'll be your net controller for this morning.'

This is the VHF.

It's what we use to stay in contact with other islands and the mainland.

Every morning at 8:30, there's what we call the net,

which is kind of like the news, only you don't watch it,

you just listen for it.

-Hello, Mum.

-Hey, boys!

The cat's on the back of the bed, but look,

there's actually a stray hermit crab that you can return, please.

Before he comes and bites my toes.

Our island is in the country of Tonga.

To get here, it takes three days' travel from the UK.

In the holiday season, we get tourists coming to stay here.

This is our main house, which we call Happy Appi.

We park our boat at the front.

The guests stay in the beach house.

The island is surrounded by coral reefs.

The family business is that we have a guest house,

but it's not on all the time,

because there's a season for when customers come,

because they only usually come when there's whales.

The reefs in Tonga are so special

that every year, whales come here to have their young.

It's one of the only places in the world

where you can swim with them,

and it's a really special moment in the year for us.

When I'm about to go swimming with whales, I feel very excited,

because under the water is just an entirely different world

of entirely different species,

and it's just so exciting to see such big mammals

just move so gracefully.

Can you see the reefs under the water?

They are so important to the whales, as this is where they come

to give birth, because it is warm, safe and calm.

Being in the water with a whale,

it feels really magical, because it's such a big,

intelligent creature that feels like...

it's knowing what you're trying to do.

But our reef is in danger.

If it gets too damaged, the whales will lose their birthing place,

and that would be a disaster.

Coral reefs are really important,

as they help house thousands of marine species,

from large sharks to small fish.

Coral needs tiny plants called algae to survive.

The algae is the breakfast,

lunch and tea for the coral, and gives it this pinky colour.

The rising water temperatures and tropical storms in the area

are causing the coral to shed their algae,

turning them completely white.

This is known as coral bleaching, and is very dangerous,

as the coral is more likely to catch disease and die.

We're really worried about the coral around our island,

but don't know enough about how to help it.

So Mum asked her friend, Karen, a marine expert, for help.

-Pleased to meet you, you must be...

-Luca.

-Luca, excellent.

-And you must be...

-Felix.

-Excellent. Very happy to be here.

Karen tells as that one way we can help is to do a survey

on our island beaches and surrounding coral.

So what we're doing, we're going to look at the ocean temperatures,

you see that blue line, well, you're going to read off of that.

So let's just put it into the ocean.

And you can see there, it's 28 degrees.

What does 28 degrees mean?

So, 28 degrees is the highest water temperature

before corals get stressed.

It's to do with climate change and global warming.

It's from users of fossil fuels, more cars, less green forests,

less coral reefs and mangroves to store the carbon dioxide,

so as much a part of it as natural,

a lot of it is accelerated by man-made practices.

What are we looking for when we survey the beach?

So, a couple of things, one is that there's no rubbish around,

especially plastics and plastic bags that can float into the ocean.

The other is just to make sure that there's no big eroded areas,

like, your sand's not disappearing.

But if you're noticing any dramatic changes,

you should note it down and then bring it in and let us know.

Karen tells us that if the stress continues,

then the coral will eventually die.

We need to learn how to survey the reef properly,

so we can keep it healthy.

So we'll be recording everything that we see,

any groupers, any turtles,

and then when we come back, we'll be adding that up

to see what the total number we found was.

We'll also be looking for the crown-of-thorns.

The crown-of-thorns starfish is a big threat.

It eats the algae on the coral, and slowly kills off the reef.

They have large spines on them

and those spines have sort of toxin in them,

so you don't want them poking you,

and if we see a crown-of-thorns, we want to try and remove it

without damaging any coral around it.

They can destroy a metre to a metre and a half of reef within a day.

So if they're left without doing some management,

they can really destroy large areas of reef.

And remember, the biggest and most important thing is always spit well

into your mask to stop it from fogging up.

I'm hoping to see groupers, turtles and eels.

'But we'll only see them if the reef is healthy.'

I'm very excited to survey this reef,

so I can know what to touch and what not to touch.

So when we're swimming, we signal to each other by saying, "OK,"

and we signal back, "OK."

So let's go!

Yay!

Under water, we see a few different species, which we take note of.

We notice some small fish, but no large fish or turtles,

which you would expect to see on a healthy reef.

The coral reef isn't very colourful,

so we're really devastated to see how unhealthy it all looks.

The good news is we see plenty of sea cucumbers.

They feed on tiny bits of waste on the ocean floor,

and help keep the reef clean, which gives us hope.

Not a lot of healthy coral, but...

there were a few patches and a lot of sea cucumbers.

'Karen leaves us with some homework, desert island style -

'to survey another part of the reef to build a bigger picture

'on how healthy it all this, and get the results to her next week.'

I think the survey will go great.

I think they've really want to do their bit

to help out and to help get some of these reefs protected.

Healthy reefs bring whales, and whales bring tourists

to stay on our island.

When we have a lot of guests staying, we have to stay in camp,

which is real outdoors living.

This is the refrigerator.

Then there's also the other pantry, which is that.

'All our water comes from rain, and it's collected in these tanks.'

We need a lot of rain,

and this tank is half full, same as this one,

and this is all the water we have on our island.

This long drop is the camp toilet,

which is one of the most disturbing things we have to do

when we stay up here.

The thing that's really annoying about this toilet is, obviously,

cockroaches would like it under there.

Sometimes a cockroach crawls out.

The weather changes so quickly,

it can be sunny one minute, and then stormy the next.

'Good morning to you all. I'll be starting with the weather forecast.

'Cloudy periods with occasional showers. Heavy at times.

'A heavy, damaging cloud warning remains in force for the Vava'u,

'plus some very rough seas, a heavy, damaging east-to-south-east swell.

'That is our weather, and we'll be moving out to our prediction...'

'But despite the rain, we've got work to do.'

'We're halfway through building our new guest house,

'Coral Cottage, so we don't have to move out of our home

'when guests stay.'

Yeah, you know what this wood is for, guys?

-Coral Cottage.

-Yeah, Coral Cottage.

Some is for the new deck,

and some is for actually building the wall frames.

So the thin stuff is the deck?

Yeah, and you guys can take that, cos it's actually not that heavy.

HEAVY RAIN

I kind of enjoy the work with my dad,

because I like watching a building sort of just

grow into its full structure.

Now we are making the deck here at Coral Cottage, and the wooden frame.

Living in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

means we get tropical storms.

Three months ago, Cyclone Winston hit our home -

the worst storm in over 100 years.

The first thing that came off the entire house

was the tin at the top of this roof.

Then this part came off, as well, and that part, and all this stuff,

which is attached to the roof,

and when that came undone,

then the whole roof just flipped back that way.

And...yeah, it was in front of the door,

so in the morning it was pretty hard to get out.

But after a lot of hard work, we get things back to normal.

Today, we've come to the mainland to pick up supplies.

Our parents come into town usually once a week,

but Luca and me prefer to stay on the island,

so we come in only if we need to.

Right now, we're at the market,

which we come to pretty much every time we come here,

because it's where all the fruit, vegetables,

and just all the healthy foods are.

Boys, do you want to pick some?

-The whole thing?

-Yeah, just two.

Yeah, sorry.

Perfect!

Yeah. That's it. Alors.

One of the best things about coming into town is collecting any parcels

or letters that have been sent to us.

Luca's upset because my parcel has arrived and his hasn't.

The parcel's come from England.

It was sent by my nanny.

It's going to look smart, Felix.

Whatever this is.

I think that's yours, Mum - that looks like a dress.

-No, those are your trousers.

-Oh, right.

-To go with your suit.

And to go with your jacket.

'I wouldn't wear a suit every day.'

The only reason I like a suit is for special occasions,

like Christmas or something like that.

That way you've got something good to put on.

So, Luca's feet,

because he's never worn shoes,

cos he was that much younger when we got here,

so he's got really, really wide feet,

and my mum has a thing about really wanting them,

whenever we're back in the UK, to have a smart pair of shoes.

Well, any shoes, actually.

So we go to the shoe shop, get measured,

but guaranteed they never have any that's going to fit him,

because he's just proportionately too wide for the height,

so, yeah, it's quite difficult to find you some shoes, isn't it?

And then as soon as you get them on, you just insist on taking them off.

-That's why I don't wear shoes.

-I know!

Just one more thing to do before we go back to the island.

We have our homework to do that Karen set us - the big reef survey.

We're going to survey our reef, and find out how badly damaged it is.

On the practice survey, I was kind of concerned

about the health on our reef,

so hopefully the next part of the reef will be a lot healthier.

We're going to be getting there on the boat,

because this one's a lot further out.

I hope we'll see some parrotfish, grouper, sharks, turtles...

all of them are a very important part in the reef's food web.

'We need to make a note of all the marine species that we can spot.'

I have seen seven parrotfish and four surgeonfish so far.

We see a rare sight - a sea turtle in the distance.

The reef seems a lot more colourful than the reef closer to shore.

But then, Felix spots something.

We just found a crown-of-thorns on the reef.

We've got to be very careful to not break the crown-of-thorns,

cos if you break them, they multiply, and it gets worse.

It's really difficult to remove,

and I'm worried I won't be able to get it.

But eventually, determination pays off.

Well done, Felix.

It's very good if we remove this starfish from the reef,

because it eats all the algae, and just destroys

lots and lots of beautiful reefs.

Back in the water, we manage to remove a few more,

which is excellent news for the reef,

but there's still lots of work to do.

The second part of our survey is to look at the health of our beach,

and clean up the rubbish that gets washed ashore or left by tourists,

before it damages the environment.

If kids are on a beach and they just come across any tiny...

Even just a bottle cap or a piece of rubbish,

they could just pick it up, and put it in a bin.

'Even though the ocean has washed the rubbish clean,

'it can still be toxic to reefs and sea life.'

These won't fit you, there're huge!

They won't fit me!

I've found this, which is one of the most annoying, cos it breaks up.

And then it becomes lots of different separate pieces,

and is very poisonous.

Well, that looks a lot better now, doesn't it?

When we get back,

we find Mum has a plan to get rid of the crown-of-thorns starfish.

Oh, there you are. I've already started.

-Who's going to take over?

-Felix, do you want to finish digging the hole?

Yeah, I can do that.

So, although we only got three out of the five we would have liked

to have got, that's made a huge difference to that reef.

We've just got to go back and see if we can get the others another day.

-Good compost. So, who's going to close the hole?

-Me.

So, do you remember how much damage Karen said

that these things can do in just one day?

-Yeah, one metre.

-Yeah. A day.

So much of island life is spent on the water and just living.

I come fishing with my dad as long as I have the chance,

and if there's room on the boat.

Yeah, that's it. And then you start winding.

There you go.

Yeah, but I just can't do everything fast.

Hey, you start practising, and then it'll come.

Tuna, wahoo, mahi-mahi...

Anything that we will eat, basically.

Sashimi. It tastes like sashimi.

Sashimi's raw fish.

I don't really like killing the fish, but it's, you know,

it's like, part of the cycle of life.

Some of our best ingredients come from right here on the island.

Here's some chillies.

So, we're collecting these chillies because we are making a hot sauce,

and these are the hottest chillies there are.

Though they're very small, they're...

..boiling hot.

-Bon appetit, everyone!

-Bon appetit.

A few days later, we head to the mainland

to let Karen know what we found on the second reef that we surveyed.

All the information we have collected will be given to

the Government, and we hope it will encourage them to give our reef

protected status.

It was much better. It had much more colour in it.

I mean, the other one, it was mainly just brown and grey.

It sounds like it's a much more balanced reef.

And what did you see?

We saw a lot of parrotfish,

and unfortunately, a lot of crown-of-thorns.

Did you manage to get any of the crown-of-thorns?

Well, we saw five,

but they were juvenile, so I'm guessing there's many more,

but we got three. We used it as compost, actually.

Oh, that's a brilliant idea - helping the garden at the same time.

The data that you've collected here,

we'll be able to use to help get some changes in the law

to get some of our reefs protected.

'Karen asks us to keep checking the reef every month,

'and report back the findings.'

My biggest goal for this reef would probably be for its data

not just to affect our island, but the whole of Tonga as well.

After months of work, Coral Cottage is finally finished.

Tourists are arriving to swim with the whales,

and we get some great news about our survey.

Hey, boys, I just got an e-mail from Karen from VEPA.

-You want to come and hear what she has to say?

-Oh, yeah!

So, it's written to all of us.

She says,

"We want to say a heartfelt thank you

"for the commitment that Felix and Luca have shown

"towards the coral reef in Fofoa.

"It is great to hear that Felix and Luca

"are continuing the monthly monitoring.

"Thank you so much, Felix and Luca,

"and we look forward to continuing to work together

"for our oceans and coral reefs.

"Best wishes, Karen from VEPA."

-What do you think?

-Awesome.

-Yeah!

'It's great news that our survey results

'are helping towards protecting our reefs for the whales to return.'

We have seen a few whales swim by the island so far this season,

but as the water has been really choppy,

we haven't managed to swim with them yet.

It's amazing to think that these humpbacks

have swum over 5,000 miles from Antarctica to our warmer waters

to have their young.

A female whale, known as a cow, can weigh up to 30 tonnes.

That's as much as 20 cars.

Newborn calves are usually three to five metres long.

They produce a lot of sounds known as whale songs.

A male's song can be heard over 1,000 miles away.

Now that the weather is calmer,

we go out to see if we can finally swim with them.

We're really looking forward to hearing a whale song.

Listening to a whale sing is one of the wonders of the ocean world.

All your hair tingles.

The first thing we see isn't a whale, but a shark.

Luckily, it's harmless.

We also find a sailfish, which comes right up to us.

And then, what we've really been hoping for - a whale song.

Can you hear it? It's amazing. FAINT WHALE SONG

We finally get up close to them.

WHALE SONG

When there's a single whale around, you can feel it.

You can feel the singing vibrating straight all across your body,

so you sort of vibrate yourself.

Being in the water with a whale feels really magical,

because it's such a big, intelligent creature.

If the reef died off,

that would mean the whales wouldn't come,

because they want to have their calves on a healthy reef.

I want to see this island be shining very, very bright.

In its beauty, and so it is in a golden line.

Swimming with a whale is absolutely epic.

And I'd be completely devastated if the whales never came back.

-So, boys, how was that?

-Crazy.

-Absolutely insane!

It looked fantastic on our viewer.

-What did you see?

-We saw a sailfish.

There was about four humpback whales.

-Wow!

-Saw a shark!

-A shark as well? Cool!

So we've seen loads and loads of false killer whales.

Oh, wow!

Amazing!

Well done, mate.

Yeah.

If people wouldn't be wasteful,

then the world would live on a lot longer.

I think it's very important

that this island and the reefs stay healthy.

I'd say it's a very good thing, what we're doing,

so for future generations, say in 40 years' time,

people can enjoy what I once enjoyed.

WHALE SONG