The Wall Street Journal

April 30, 2008

Shrinking Dollar

Meets Its Match

In Dolphin Teeth

Solomon Islands Prize

Commodity Over Cash;

Closing In for the Kill

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

April 30, 2008; Page A1

HONIARA, Solomon Islands -- Forget the euro and the yen. In this South Pacific archipelago, people are pouring their savings into another appreciating currency: dolphin teeth.

Shaped like miniature ivory jalapeños, the teeth of spinner dolphins have facilitated commerce in parts of the Solomon Islands for centuries. This traditional currency is gaining in prominence now after years of ethnic strife that have undermined the country's economy and rekindled attachment to ancient customs.

[Spinner Dolphin]

Over the past year, one spinner tooth has soared in price to about two Solomon Islands dollars (26 U.S. cents), from as little as 50 Solomon Islands cents. The official currency, pegged to a global currency basket dominated by the U.S. dollar, has remained relatively stable in the period.

Even Rick Houenipwela, the governor of the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, says he is an investor in teeth, having purchased a "huge amount" a few years ago. "Dolphin teeth are like gold," Mr. Houenipwela says. "You keep them as a store of wealth -- just as if you'd put money in a bank."

Few Solomon Islanders share Western humane sensibilities about the dolphins. Hundreds of animals are killed at a time in regular hunts, usually off the large island of Malaita. Dolphin flesh provides protein for the villagers. The teeth are used like cash to buy local produce. Fifty teeth will purchase a pig; a handful are enough for some yams and cassava.

The rising value of dolphin teeth, Mr. Houenipwela says, is explained in part by the need to heal the wounds of the country's ethnic conflict. According to local custom, tribal disputes over lost lives or property can often be settled by paying compensation -- in teeth rather than dollars.

[Map]

Buying Brides

Another reason, Mr. Houenipwela says, is the rapidly growing population of young men who need dolphin teeth for buying brides -- the biggest financial transaction in many Malaita islanders' lives. Teeth are the currency of choice for this payment: one healthy bride costs at least 1,000 teeth. That necessitates the killing of dozens of dolphins. Local spinner dolphins yield more than 20 teeth, each about an inch long.

While originally restricted to Malaita, the tooth frenzy has spread all over this former British protectorate of 500,000 people, Mr. Houenipwela says. Ethnic Malaitans -- about one third of the country's population -- are known for their commercial prowess. They dominate the nation's capital city of Honiara, on the rival island of Guadalcanal, and have also settled throughout the country.

On a recent morning, a skinny 24-year-old named Sharon Faisi sat in the Honiara waterfront hut of her future father-in-law, Robert Satu, examining several strings of dolphin teeth that are usually kept out of sight in plastic jars. "It's better than dollars. It lasts longer and has more value than money," she said, beaming as she counted the teeth. Mr. Satu, 56, explained that he needs to collect a total of 5,000 teeth for the double wedding of his two sons in July next year.

To obtain the valuable commodity, Mr. Satu orders directly from a remote dolphin-hunting village in Malaita, communicating via a radio in that village's Anglican church. (Many clerics of the Melanesian Brotherhood, the Solomon Islands' Anglican community, wear their crucifix pendants on dolphin-tooth necklaces.) Other city dwellers without such connections resort to intermediaries like Henry Sukufatu, a dolphin hunter who says he sells about 1,000 teeth a month at his stall on a trash-strewn beach in Honiara's grimy outskirts.

As the demand for dolphin teeth has increased, the supply can't keep up, he laments: "People want more teeth, and it's not that easy to get dolphins. It's a very tiring job."

Malaita Dolphin Hunts

Organized on particularly calm days several times a year, Malaita dolphin hunts are complicated endeavors, involving dozens of villagers and a flotilla of paddle boats. When a pod of dolphins are spotted frolicking in the ocean, the boats approach them in a semicircle. Then, fishermen start pounding stones and coconut shells under water, producing a rhythm that drives the dolphins into a trancelike state. As the boats close in on the pod, the noise pushes the dolphins toward a particularly swampy stretch of the shore.

"The dolphins see it's dark underneath, think it's deep water, dive and get stuck in the mud," says Mr. Sukufatu. "To subdue them, we cover the breathing hole in their heads with our palms, and push them deeper and deeper into the mud."

Once the dolphins are nearly suffocated, hunters tie strings around their snouts, so as not to damage the teeth in the thrashing, and then hack off their heads with machetes. Then, the teeth are divided among the hunters, while the meat goes to feed the rest of the village, Mr. Sukufatu says.

The tradition has deep roots. Dolphin teeth and other animal products were used as currency in the Solomon Islands and other parts of Melanesia long before European colonizers arrived here in the late 19th century.

[Dolphin Teeth]

Robert Satu, pictured with his future daughter-in-law, is collecting dolphin teeth for the double wedding of his two sons.

An exhibit of traditional money in the central bank's lobby displays the now-worthless garlands of dog teeth. Curled pig tusks have played a similar role in the neighboring nation of Vanuatu and parts of Papua New Guinea. Whale, rather than dolphin, teeth were collected in Fiji. While the use of these traditional currencies is dying off elsewhere in the region, there is no sign of the boom in dolphin teeth abating here. Mr. Houenipwela, the central bank governor, says that some entrepreneurs have recently asked him for permission to establish a bank that would take deposits in teeth.

A dolphin-tooth bank with clean, insect-free vaults would solve the problem of tooth decay under inappropriate storage conditions, and would also deter counterfeiters who pass off fruit-bat teeth, which resemble dolphin teeth, for the genuine article. Mr. Houenipwela, however, says he had to turn down the request because only institutions accepting conventional currencies can call themselves banks under Solomon Islands law.

Recognizing the power of Malaita's dental tradition, Solomon Islands environmentalists -- who loudly protested the recent export of several dozen live dolphins to an aquarium in Dubai -- usually refrain from criticizing the slaughter. "People are keen on keeping their culture, and this includes the traditional harvesting of dolphins," says Julia Manioli, fisheries policy officer at the Honiara office of WWF. "It would not be possible for someone from outside to come in and tell them to stop."

Some Western environmentalists tried, but to no avail. Recently, Mr. Sukufatu says, "white people" visited his stall, trying to offer him and some of his colleagues from Malaita a large sum of money if they would pledge to stop killing dolphins. The offer was quickly rebuffed, he says: "The white man's money will end, but the dolphin teeth will always be there for us."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com1