Our Commitment to our Lagoon Environment

We all love a joke at Captain Tama's Lagoon Cruizes but one thing we are very serious about is the environment.

Captain Tama's donates a percentage of all sales back to our environment and our community through sponsorship of various projects aimed at protecting our lagoon and surrounding environment and through sponsorship of various community projects and sports clubs.

Captain Tama's makes every effort to ensure our impact on the environment is as small as possible, we even have a composting toilet on the motu and we always keep our boats regularly serviced. We always make sure all the scraps from the BBQ lunch go to our pigs and dogs so nothing is wasted!

Ra'ui

Ra’ui is the traditional environment protection system that involves traditional leaders banning the harvesting of marine resources in designated areas. Traditionally, it was imposed by the chief of the tribe banning the harvesting of food resources for a set period of time to enable stocks to increase.

The main purpose of the ra’ui is to help protect the marine environment and to contribute towards an increase in marine life for present and future generations. There are 12 ra’ui areas in Rarotonga including Tikioki, where Captain Tama's  Lagoon Cruizes set up its marine site in 1992. 

Some ra’ui are short-term and allow harvesting on a rotational basis, others are long term. Parts of Tikioki ra’ui are now permanently reserved.

As a tourism operator in Muri and Tikioki Lagoons and one with a reliance on our natural environment, we recognised early on that we have a responsibility to the marine environment that we operate in and this was the reason that we approached the Ariki (traditional leaders) in the surrounding villages in the early 1990's and asked them to initiate a protection system.