Behind the Story: How Grantee Carl Smith Earned Trust on a Remote Micronesian Atoll

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Pulitzer Center grantee Carl Smith is well experienced in traveling to the most remote reaches of the world for a story, but diving with a GoPro camera in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was a new depth for him.

“There was this incredibly steep, sheer drop-off, and then just deep, dark blue out beyond. And we were on the very edge of that drop off that led down into the Mariana Trench. And it was such a full-on feeling. It sort of felt a bit like what I imagine stepping out into space could feel like, because you're just surrounded by this incredible vastness. You're looking out into it, and you get lost out there.”

Smith was reporting on the Ulithi atoll in the western Pacific Ocean for a Pulitzer Center-supported project on climate change and the legacy of World War II has affected the local people. A small community of fewer than 1,000 residing on four of the 40 small islands barely rising above the sea, Ulithi is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels, increasing extreme weather events, and invasive species are a few of the issues that threaten the community's way of life. Compounding the problem, leftover World War II wreckage from a major U.S. naval base continues to contaminate the Pacific island chain’s reef.

However, its inhabitants have learned from the land for thousands of years, and are not ready to give up yet. They are working with scientists to combine their traditional management practices with research in order to protect the environment and prepare it for further changes to come. 

Reporting for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Smith collaborated with locals to create a multimedia view of the atoll through photography and radio. His project reveals the possibilities for climate-threatened populations of a collaborative model between Western science and Indigenous traditional land stewardship. Smith takes a similar approach to his own reporting work, taking time to understand the local people’s culture, ways of knowing, and communication styles before pulling out a camera. The resulting series of reports reflects the bittersweet balance of hope and determination in the face of extreme climate threats.

Pulitzer Center Digital Production Coordinator Grace Jensen spoke to Smith about his reporting experience on the Ulithi atoll, how he earned the community’s trust, and his advice for journalists interested in climate solutions reporting.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Grace Jensen: Tell me a little bit about yourself and about your reporting project.

Carl Smith: So my name is Carl Smith. I'm a science journalist at the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I've been working there for over a decade in a lot of different roles, but the thing that kind of unifies the 12 or so years I've worked there is making long-form science documentaries for audio, so for radio and for podcast. I also do written features with original photography, and in recent years, I've done quite a bit of field reporting from often quite challenging places. 

So I pitched a series a couple years ago that was taking our audiences to the kind of remarkable or unusual places that science happens in the European Union. And based on that project, we also set up a kind of spin-off show called Pacific Scientific, which was about profiling people who are living in the Pacific and working in science. And so we made a couple seasons of that show traveling through different parts of the Pacific and just basically profiling individual scientists. 

And through that work, I came across this group working in an incredibly remote atoll on the edge of the Mariana Trench. And that was Ulithi atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia in the Yap State. And this was a group of hovering between 700 and 1,000 people spread across a bunch of different islands in this atoll, and basically they were struggling with the legacy of World War II. They had an oil tanker in the middle of the reef that would leak oil; they had all of these wrecks and remains across the islands that were causing problems. But the legacy of the Second World War was more complex than that: It also disrupted their way of life and their culture, so their diets changed, connection with the outer world brought new technologies, and so a lot of this disrupted their traditional management practices across the atoll, including fisheries management. And so they had this host of very complex problems. 

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And of course, the more recent one for anyone living on a low-lying atoll in the Pacific is climate change. And I think a lot of these problems felt kind of insurmountable, like there were big things that a small community in the edge of the Mariana Trench, one of the most remote parts of the world, would really struggle to deal with. But I heard about a community leader there, a guy named Magul [John “Magul” Rulmal Jr.], and 18 months before I got to Ulithi atoll, I started talking with Magul about this project that he was working on, and Pacific Scientific, the show we're making. And it just sounded like a great fit, because he was a member of the community who invited scientists in to work with the community to revitalize a lot of their traditional management practices across the reef and to restore their islands to what they had been before. 

So I started talking more to my goal and to the community members, getting permission from chiefs across the islands, and talking to the scientists involved in the project. But it was prohibitively expensive getting out to this incredibly remote part of the world and very complex as well, in terms of things like permissions, but also logistics and so on. And so that's why I applied for the Pulitzer Center's reporting grant, and I was successful, and that enabled me to get there.

“It's a story of hope and resilience. It's one that's bittersweet as well.”

And this story that I made is one in a few different parts. There's a long-form, 55-minute audio documentary that walks listeners through what this part of the world feels like, how to get there, but also what were the problems that they faced historically, and more contemporary problems, and then what are the solutions that they've begun working on, and how far have they come? 

It's a story of hope and resilience. It's one that's bittersweet as well. For many groups doing this kind of work it's a very challenging space to be reporting in, because there's a lot of very big existential questions that these communities are facing. But the way the community put it to me was that instead of sitting there and doing nothing, they're doing everything they can to fight for their atoll and their way of life, and every small change they can make, everything they can do to help preserve their atoll and keep their community there for as long as possible. It also builds resilience and helps them move strong if they do have to move one day as well.  And so even though climate change remains probably the biggest existential threat for that community, and they've seen really significant erosion on the edge of the main island, they have made some really significant and wonderful changes in terms of revitalizing traditional fishing practices… and they've seen some benefits, both to fish populations, but also to the reefs. 

They've also done some really great work eradicating invasive species on one of their islands and restoring vital island for gardening. And they've also just begun doing some work within the community, like revitalizing culture, traditions, and celebrating the way that they have lived as a community for so long through song and through storytelling projects. 

And then beyond the documentary, we also had written features. I collected stories on the way in and out of that part of the world too, because in Yap State, there's not really many journalists or people doing journalism. And I also worked with a photographer on the main island of Yap. Her name's Marzy Adalbai. She was very new to working in this space, and didn't want to step into doing the journalistic side of things, but this was a great opportunity for her to practice her photography and videography skills, and it was a really wonderful knowledge exchange for both of us. So she was there ostensibly as a support photographer. 

I did a lot of photography in the field myself, but she was also doing photography and videography in the field, but also as someone to help me navigate the culture, the traditions, the language, as well. And so we really helped each other, and both learnt from each other through this collaboration. 

GJ: How did you earn the trust of the local community as an outsider? It seemed like they shared a lot of their culture with you, the meaning behind their chants and their traditions that they might not usually talk about.

CS: So I think in many parts of the Pacific and in many parts of the world, especially with climate reporting, there's a lot of caution from communities, because a lot of the reporting has been doom and gloom. And so I think the first thing is, we had an 18-month lead time before I went out to Ulithi, where I was talking to Magul, the community leader, the science lead, and meeting other members of the community as well. And that process allowed us to talk really deeply about what I would like to do for this story, about the work that they're doing, for me to really understand what's happening out there, and also for me to understand their concerns. 

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When it comes to reporting, they had been scarred in the past by people coming in and reporting in that kind of doom-and-gloom way. The community leader told me he understands the value of that style of reporting in that it can convince people in positions of power to act, but also it's really demoralizing for the community. And so the people that I talked to said, “Look, we want to tell the story of hope. We understand that there's a grim reality behind it, but we're doing everything we can.” 

And so I think really understanding that tension in a very deep way, hearing them out through multiple conversations was really important in the early stages of building trust with the community, and also being really clear about the story that I was going to tell. I was operating with full editorial independence, and I made that very clear from the outset. And so I just told them, here's the story that I'm going to be telling, and some of it is challenging stuff as well, but more than anything, my goal is not to come in with my own agenda and to spin a version of their story, but to piece together the story that they were telling me and to structure it in a way that made sense to the audience.

“Some people were concerned initially, with scientists coming in and outsiders coming in. Others were excited, and I think capturing that nuance is the best way of showcasing what the community is doing.”

And so I talked in the end I think 40 different people for this story, a mixture of community members and scientists. I talked to women, children, and men, and there is a real gender divide and an age divide in that community as well. I also talked to a bunch of the scientists who are visiting, and I was able to talk to a representative group from across the four inhabited islands and all the different communities in Ulithi atoll as well. And so, stitching together everything that I was told was a very complex job, but I think that was also part of the responsibility of me coming in as a reporter to reflect the full situation there. 

And so in terms of community, building trust with community, I think being really clear from the outset and having that long lead time to really understand all of the nuance and complexity was vital. And then also working with Marzy, having someone who understood culture, traditions, and customs in that part of the world. I met her on Yap State before we flew into Ulithi atoll, and she was able to give me a little bit of the language, just so that I can start and end [interviews] in the language of the people of Ulithi and to understand some of the cultural considerations that might be different for me. 

And the community has been really thrilled with the story. So I've heard back from Magul, the community leader. We messaged on WhatsApp often, he's really happy, and Marzy is really happy with the experience. And it's a great way to showcase some of her beautiful photography as well. And the scientists are really happy too. This is a great opportunity for them to share a different model of doing science. 

So I think that long, slow, drawn-out process, it's never going to be perfect. There's probably going to be better ways to do it as we learn more about how to work with communities like this, but at least in this instance, everyone was really happy with the finished product.

GJ: That's great. So since you also write an ethics show for kids, I'm wondering about your thoughts from an ethics standpoint of how do you see traditional knowledge combining with modern science to protect the environment? And what do you think are the challenges of the local communities and scientific community working together?

CS: I think the first thing is, I think it's really important to understand that there are different ways of knowing. I think in the West, there's this idea that science is a series of facts, and those facts are undisputed, and that that's all there is to it. But, science is a process of incorporating the best available information and doing so in little kind of building blocks, bit by bit, and changing if there's better information that points us toward a better version of what is true about the world around us. And I think a lot of the time, people kind of miss that there are other ways of doing that, including through traditional knowledge.

“I think it's really important to understand that there are different ways of knowing.”

The community has been living there successfully for at least thousands of years, potentially for longer. And they've been able to maintain their reef atoll ecosystem throughout that time. It's an incredible feat even after all of these changes. And so they've obviously figured out ways to manage their reef, and it looks a bit different, it sounds a bit different, feels a bit different. They use some chants to codify a lot of their knowledge. It's definitely something that I wasn't familiar with. And I think many scientists would find that a challenging thing to consider, their local science. 

But I think it's really important to point out that there are different ways of knowing, and time and time and time again we learned—and I talked to some external experts about this that work in the Pacific—we're learning that traditional knowledge, as you test it, it is confirmed by the science as well. The things that you learn from communities about how they, say, manage their reef, or patterns and signals that they look for in the environment. When you begin using traditional Western science to understand those patterns, you start to see that this is a great way of understanding the world around you, and it carries value and weight. And so I think being really clear about that from the outset, understanding that is really important. 

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And I think in terms of challenges for both the community and the scientists, I think the science team was really aware of this, that there are other ways of knowing and science is not the be all and end all, especially when you're coming into to work in this cross-cultural context. And so they designed their work around the community's needs and around giving back to the community in the ways that they want. 

And the scientists also told me they spent just a lot of time at the beginning doing what I was talking about before, which is just listening, spending that time listening closely to the concerns of the community, but also how they operate, how they codify their knowledge, to really get a full picture of what is going on out there before stepping in when the community asks them to to begin looking at specific parts of what's happening in their reef atoll ecosystem. And so I think the scientists working out there have developed a really fascinating and interesting model for how science can help communities in places like the Pacific. 

GJ: What are the biggest lessons that you hope that readers or listeners take away from your reporting?

CS: I think the biggest thing for me is there were so many inspiring people that I met in that community, and their final message you hear at the end of the piece is: “We're a small community, and we're doing everything we can to make changes at our local level. And we hope the bigger communities of the world, the big nations with more power, do everything that they can to deal with the bigger problems in our world at the moment.” And I think that's a really powerful message, and it's very inspiring seeing a community have all of these wins at a local level, just a thousand people, in a very, very remote part of the Pacific Ocean, and they're doing some really important work in their neck of the woods that is helping. 

And I think their message at the end of the story was, look at what we're able to do when we all come together. So what can you, out there listening, do when we come together as well? And I think that that's probably the most powerful message in the story for me.

“Their final message you hear at the end of the piece is: ‘We're a small community, and we're doing everything we can to make changes at our local level. And we hope the bigger communities of the world, the big nations with more power, do everything that they can.’”

GJ: I think this project had great multimedia aspects, including the radio broadcasts and your own photography, others’ photography. So can you tell me more about the process of putting the stories together, what that was like for you?

CS: Yeah, so I worked with Marzy in the field, but in terms of the audio interviews and the structuring of the story, that was me. So I had a plan, I talked about this with the science team, but also the community leads, and Marzy and I went out and worked together, where I would interview people, I would tick off all the boxes we need for the written and audio stories, and then we'd work together to take some photographs or short videos. 

This often meant tagging me along with the science team as they went out into the field. So we walked along beaches with them. We went to a turtle rookery island with some community members, and they showed us through that island. We went out with the community and scientists to the very edge of the atoll to dive under the water and take some short videos of the collaboration that the scientists and the community are doing, spot checks of coral and quantifying the number of species along the reef. 

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So that was the process of collecting everything. In terms of internet connection, it's very remote. So I was backing everything up as we were going and storing everything on USBs in a little dry bag, just in case anything happened, we went into the water or whatever. Then I would have a backup of all the data.

And then when I got back, it was just me operating in isolation at that point. So I put together the audio documentary, a couple of other shorter audio pieces that I collected on the way I put together the online story. And we used photography from Marzy, myself, and a couple of community members as well, I think, and also Island conservation and taking some photographs earlier that we used. And for me, it was actually quite an easy process of putting the story together at that point. There was a mountain of tape to look through with 40 different interviews, but I knew exactly the story that I wanted to craft based on what everyone had told me. 

GJ: Last question for you, do you have any advice for journalists who are just starting out and maybe interested in climate solutions journalism like you?

CS: Stories of hope and resilience are really powerful, especially at this time. I think probably my main advice would be, just be aware of the sensitive territory you're stepping into, especially with really vulnerable communities. 

And I think, if I've learned anything from this experience, it's that you should do that work early on of hearing them out, talking to them, being really clear about what you're going to do from the outset, just so that everyone is on the same page, and you're as up to speed as you can be about. What are the cultural considerations moving into this space? What are the concerns amongst the community that I might have to navigate? And is it even appropriate for me to be stepping in there, like if they’re kind of reluctant, and maybe it's not worth stepping in and trying to tell that story if it's going to be traumatic for them. 

And yeah, reporting on anything that is traumatic or if there's crisis involved, then you just want to be a good human and do everything you can to make sure that you're not just operating as a journalist, but you're being kind and gentle, and you're listening and being empathetic as well. 

One thing that I did, and I think this is quite a useful thing as well, is at the end of crafting into the stories, I ran them past the community lead and just asked, Look, is there anything culturally inappropriate in this story that we should take a closer look at? And that doesn't undermine your independence as a journalist, you can still operate with full editorial independence. And like I said from the outset, we were very clear that I was going to be telling this story and that I would have the final say on how it's told, but it's basically always in everyone's best interest to not say something that is culturally inappropriate. And thankfully, there was nothing major to sort out on those fronts, but I think that is a really important step in the process like this, where you're reporting on vulnerable communities, you're coming in as an outsider and reporting on a group you may not have full knowledge of the culture and context.

And so I think that process was also quite a useful thing to do. I think every journalist will have their own ways of drawing that line and where they want to ask for feedback on things, but I found that one worked really well for me.

“Reporting on anything that is traumatic or if there's crisis involved, then you just want to be a good human and do everything you can to make sure that you're not just operating as a journalist, but you're being kind and gentle, and you're listening and being empathetic as well.”

And I think also, especially if it's vulnerable communities, but even if it's more kind of a story of resilience solutions, climate journalism, it's just being aware that it might take some time. You can't just kind of rock up, tell it quickly, and then get out of there. If there are cultural considerations, or if there are vulnerable communities, or if it's going to be a difficult story to tell because there's trauma in the community, then I think being really clear with yourself and with editors that it might take more time is important too, because you don't want to go in and do more harm than good. 

There's a lot that journalists are feeling through in this space at the moment, everyone is trying to do the right thing, but it's changing very quickly. So I'm sure it'll keep changing. So just checking in with people reading maybe stories like this, so that you've got a sense of what others are doing in this space and learning from one another is quite important.