Never Lost
New Exploratorium Website About Polynesian Navigation
English and Hawaiian Versions Launches May 4
www.exploratorium.edu/neverlost

Never Lost, a new Exploratorium website, online at www.exploratorium.edu/neverlost, explores ancient navigation techniques that nearly disappeared, but are now experiencing a revival across Polynesia, especially in Hawaii. Thousands of years ago Polynesians navigated by direct observation, relying on clues from the sun, moon, and stars, as well as ocean swells, winds, and wildlife, as they voyaged over open ocean settling islands across the Pacific. Never Lost shares the story of this living tradition and charts wayfinding practices that are still in use today. This multimedia site will launch on May 4, 2010, and will be available in both English and Hawaiian.

From a virtual canoe floating beneath an “astronomically correct” sky, online visitors can learn to see the world as it appeared to the ancient Polynesians. Virtual voyage instruction, master navigators “talking story” in the Hawaiian tradition, an online planetarium with a tour of the Hawaiian night sky, podcasts, and educational resources for teachers will be featured. Never Lost is intended to become part of the Exploratorium’s Ancient Observatories series. In researching Never Lost, Exploratorium staff collaborated with expert navigator Kalepa Baybayan and Dr. Paul Coleman, an astrophysicist at the University of Hawaii, as well as the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii: http://www.imiloahawaii.org.

Chadd Kalepa Baybayan, a native Hawaiian, is an expert ocean navigator, and Navigator-in-Residence at the Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo, Hawai’i. He is one among a handful of people in the world to have been granted the rank of Pwo (master navigator in the Micronesian tradition). Baybayan also mentors Hawaiian youth in traditional navigation practices that use no instruments aboard double-hulled canoes on voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean.