AKA Mystery Island
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2017
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is the fastest growing sector in tourism? It is cruise ship holidays, increasing exponentially and globally. Twenty-five million cruise vacations were taken this year and that will double very soon. International cruise lines want remote, pristine and idyllic places to satisfy the appetite of passengers to be somewhere beautiful, especially in the Pacific.
In a remote, tiny community in the southern tip of Vanuatu in the South-West Pacific, a village is earning more than ever through hosting gleaming white giant cruise ships that regularly appear over the horizon. Most months more than 25,000 visitors step ashore. The attraction is Inyeug, marketed to tourists as Mystery Island - a tiny offshore reef-ringed island, fringed by a beautiful beach and surrounded by sparkling clear turquoise shallow water.
Susie Emmett listens to villagers as they prepare souvenirs and village tours. She asks the captain of a cruise ship about the effects of the ships on the environment. And she joins tourists as they explore and meets the teams dealing with the debris after their departure.
(Photo: Locals hold up their catch from fishing in the island of Inyeug. Credit: Green Shoots)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the |
| 0:05.1 | documentary podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our |
| 0:10.0 | presenters and reporters across the world. If you have the time please rate the |
| 0:14.8 | documentary on your podcast app and leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. |
| 0:20.3 | Welcome to Inuyg, a tiny sparkling deserted offshore island in the remote Southwest Pacific. |
| 0:29.0 | For generations, all Inyeg provided to the villages on the mainland who paddled over here on their canoes was fish. |
| 0:36.0 | But now the community that owns Inuag harvests as much as a million dollars a month from the bright white cruise ships coming over the horizon. |
| 0:47.0 | Thousands of tourists are time, spend a day here on what is marketed as Mystery Island. |
| 0:54.3 | I'm Susie Emmett and this is a Mystery Island here on BBC World Service. I was last here 30 years ago when I lived |
| 1:09.1 | and worked in these islands of Vanuatu and this tiny island was all but deserted but today the whole |
| 1:15.5 | village is preparing for the next cruise shipload of visitors and that includes the |
| 1:21.0 | string band which is practicing under a coconut palm just behind me. |
| 1:26.0 | I want to see how this community runs this successful tourism business while minimizing damage |
| 1:32.1 | to their precious pristine natural resources, |
| 1:35.0 | not to mention their culture and traditional way of life. Barry. |
| 1:50.0 | How's the morning? |
| 1:51.0 | I'm you all right. |
| 1:52.0 | You miss a historian a little bit? |
| 1:54.0 | Yes, very good. |
| 1:55.0 | Okay, we can sit down here and talk. |
| 1:58.0 | I've taken a small boat over to the mainland from Mystery Island to a nighticham and the village of an algaahad, |
| 2:05.0 | to have a meeting with the man who's |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.