Rick Feinberg (Professor Emeriti, Anthropology), authored a journal article, "Auto-Experimentation in Wave Piloting and Celestial Navigation: Vaeakau-Taumako, Solomon Islands," Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Ian Conrich, Volume 10, Issue 2, (2022): 195-205.
About the article
This essay involves ‘auto-experimentation’, or experimenting on myself, to learn and assess the arts of seafaring and navigation as practiced in the southeastern Solomon Islands. From 2007-8, I spent nine months with people from the Polynesian island of Taumako, exploring local seafaring techniques. However, no voyaging canoes were operational during my time in the field. Therefore, instead of watching navigators as they plied their trade, I spoke with them at length and tried to test my own ability to implement what I had learned from my instructors. Here I recount my efforts, while travelling aboard a cargo ship in the Solomons’ Temotu Province, to estimate my heading and location by tracking the movements of stars, the sun, and wind and wave patterns. I then consider my own level of success and what it might suggest about the effectiveness of methods imparted to me by my interlocutors.