Torres Islands

The seven islands in the Torres group, from north to south, are Hiw or Hiu (the largest), Metoma, Tegua, Ngwel (an uninhabited islet), Linua, Lo or Loh, and Toga.Contrary to popular belief, only a few stretches of the Torres Islands' coastlines are graced with white sand beaches; in reality, their shores are mostly made of rocky coral uplift.The names of these settlements are: Yögevigemëne (or Yögemëne for short), Tinemēvönyö, Yawe and Yakwane (on Hiw), Lotew (on Tegua; sometimes misspelled Lateu), Lungharegi, Telakwlakw and Rinuhe (on Lo), and Likwal and Litew (on Toga).[1] Long before Europeans arrived, the indigenous inhabitants and neighbors of these islands had called them by various other names, the most important of which, in Proto-Torres-Banks, was *Vava [ˈβaβa] (> Lo-Toga Vave [ˈβaβə], Mwotlap (with locative prefix a-) Avap [aˈβap]).Despite the fact that they belonged to a broader regional complex of human and material exchanges that extended well into present-day Temotu province (in the Solomons), the Torres Islands eventually became part of the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides in 1906, and were subsequently incorporated into the Republic of Vanuatu in 1980.To date, the sale of Birgus has been directly governed by the fluctuating demand of the tourist market in faraway Port Vila and, to a lesser degree, the provincial township of Luganville.Predictably, the high demand for crab resulted in a gradual but incremental decline in the Birgus population across North Vanuatu, and led to a visible depletion of this creature's numbers in the Torres group.In the meantime, exports of crab from the Banks and Torres Islands (i.e. TorBa Province) to Port Vila is regulated through a relatively inefficient scheme of "open" and "closed" seasons and intra-regional quotas.Notwithstanding the continuity of certain core customary practices, many important and profound changes have transformed the lives and worldviews of these people as a result of more than a century of contacts and interpenetration by the Anglican church, colonial administrators and traders, and, most recently, the postcolonial influence of the nation-state and the international world market - whose greatest direct manifestation is in the form of cash, independent travellers, sailing ships and luxury cruise liners which visit this island group every so often.