The pristine ancient limestone reef surrounding Pelican Island was a barrier to our presence on the beaches of this island.  The park regulators restricted access so as to keep minimum water below the zodiac to one meter.  There is something to be said for human culpability.  Without restrictions would we have beached the boat to get a closer look?  Those crocodile tracks leading up the sand were witness to a presence beyond our understanding.

 

The reef and waves bar our way to Pelican Island.  In all the stories of origin there is an element in the Genesis account that is absent in the others.  Marilynne Robinson draws this perspective clearly in he new book, Genesis.  Adam and Eve disobeyed, Moses could have returned to Egypt, Pilate could have spared Jesus. Humans are culpable.  All this was driven home as several scientists shared their understanding of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.  Shared their experience with loss of these lungs of the planet.  Shared their amazement at the integration of mineral, plant and animal in the coral life of these reefs.

The water worn limestone barriers peek through the tidal waters as they turn to flood.  There beyond the stern a green turtle swims seeking its nesting grounds.  The turtle matures for breeding in forty years.  Sand temperatures determine gender.  In an examination of one breeding ground north of Pelican Island the hatched eggs were over 90 percent female.  With rising water temperatures fewer eggs hatch as male.

There on the island where once over five hundred pelicans nested only shorebirds flock to the highest dead tree as the tide washes over the strand.  Somehow I do not want to believe in human culpability, yet along with Cain and Moses and Abraham and every planet warming project I too am culpable.