Moana (Expedition Moana)
Bernard Gorsky
Iskry Publishing House 1966
A book that created long ago probably as many divers as Cousteau’s “Silent World”.
Moana, written by Frenchman Bernard Gorsky (I have not been able to determine if he is Russian or Polish by descent. In the pre-World War I era, Poles were often described in the world as Russians because they were subjects of the Tsar), Moana is an amazing book about diving and sailing – two things that come together in Moana but also in life in a wonderful way. Moana is to diving what the Kontiki expedition is to ocean expeditions or human-led expeditions in general . Moana is 35,000 miles of underwater exploration. Moana, like the Kontiki Expedition, depicts the World as it was a few decades ago, when hunting for fish was a normal part of sailing and diving, while describing a free beautiful world and a trip around the world with the opportunity to explore the most beautiful dive sites. Nowadays, treating fish as a contribution to the pot may be glaring, but such were the times. The times of Hemingway, “The Hunter’s Horn and Meissner’s descriptions.
Moana is Tahitian for immensity of oceans
Moana is an example of a bridge of sorts, a link between the last expeditions still in the style of 19th-century travel and the first expeditions simply touring for pleasure. The 19th century expeditions, especially the Antarctic expeditions, were actually the first expeditions in the history of mankind to explore something new. You could say simply out of curiosity. Then they slowly evolved into what we now know as tourism. Moana is something at the intersection, one experience and the other.
The expedition map both then and now is hugely impressive
Caribbean Sea, Galapagos Islands, Marquesas Islands, Pomoutu Archipelago, Tahiti , Tonga Island, Figs, New Caledonia, Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, Maldives Archipelago, Red Sea…. Thousands of miles of coral and for the most part unexplored day. Underwater life as it was in the first centuries of the world before the “big bang” …. tourism.
Expedition participants
Bernarda Gorsky, the originator, organizer and author of the book.
Sergey Arnoux – underwater hunting specialist from Tahiti
Roger Lesage – portrayed in a way that may now raise a smile of pity among freedivers and divers – diving to 20 meters on stopped breath and to 60 meters with a cylinder.
Peter Pasquier – Engineer, sailor (the only sailor overall among the participants).
What is very “Western” in the organization of this expedition and what is often forgotten by the organizers of various difficult and expensive expeditions is the changed visit to the notary and the binding of the expedition participants by contract.
The rest of the expedition is a description of amazing dive sites, reefs, wrecks and fish and something the author himself jokes about – that is, descriptions like he quotes “Papugo fish, a feast of colors – it’s an edible fish.”
In general, the kitchen occupies a large part of the book. “For dinner we had a potahitan salad prepared by Sergius of raw fish sprinkled with lemon, white sea urchins, baked crawfish (Peter caught them in the meter shallows), fillets of captain’s hawaii with curry, coconuts.”
Famous quote from the author
Echo, underwater poet, what descriptions of “black Corvina in an aristocratic visage, in a velvet robe,” followed immediately by “it’s an edible fish”; poets of cuisine perfect for today’s breakfast TV.
Well, and the best description of the feast
“Peasant,” Sergei said at the time, “When it’s supposed to be Tamara, people gather under coconut palms, for two hours heating stones on the fire. A hole is dug, the women make a mat of leaves, then after the men return from fishing, they wrap their catch in banana leaves and oblige with lianas. Heated stones are laid in a pit, and on them are fish, piglets, chickens, crayfish, iguanas, all individually wrapped in leaves. For this comes a cover of clay soil, the wait for the roast is shortened by queues of Tahitian punches. They have fruit there so peasant delight itself. Mangia such that the juice trickles down the chin.”
Moana is a description of undersea hunting done mainly on stopped breath and yet the authors of the book or perhaps in their time did not distinguish so much whether one hunted a given animal by diving on stopped breath or in scuba gear with a cylinder. Anyway, the authors of the book, the members of the expedition treated hunting fish as actually the main way of getting food, although of course they also treated hunting the biggest fish as something in the range between a sport and a feat.
Descriptions of diving in Moana are mainly descriptions of diving on stopped breath not with cylinders, not in full equipment, because in the conditions of very long cruises it turned out that the filling of cylinders was possible only sometimes in the ports of probably only then forming the first Dive Shops, and the compressor in yacht conditions very quickly ceased to be useful. Therefore, dive descriptions are descriptions of dives of such still freediving before freediving was created and named.
Moana is, first of all, a story about Freedom, about a voyage beyond the Horizon. Where anything can happen to us and at the same time we conquer more places. Moana is simply a description about the first modern expedition around the world. The first and such last.
Confessions of an adventure hunter
“I found adventure I put my arms around her, she let herself be taken and what. I met her, but the affection, but love for her melted away. Well, this is precisely what is ridiculous and unacceptable. First of all, already because if I abandoned her then everything would start again after a while anyway. For sure. Secondly, it makes no sense to think that everything passionate is behind me, that all that’s left is the same thing over and over again. After all, nothing is known yet. With her, we might as well find ourselves (as Roger sometimes says) in underpants and, with bruised eyes, end up as castaways on a deserted reef or island, meeting eye to eye with a crazed shark. Someone on board could get sick, be severely injured, die. Anything can still happen, anything that we have preconceived, accepted and that goes along with it can happen.”
