LIKE THE last boson standing on the twisted iron wreck of the Titanic First Mate Keviki mock salutes the distant horizon and jolts his back upright as the warm debris strewn water of the Pacific sloshes around his knees. Across his 1920's style sailors hat the words of his so-called "ship," the remote coral Island of Tuvalu, have faded in the relentless sun that bleaches the tiny spit of land we are standing on.
The fourth smallest country in the world after Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, and one of the least populated, Tuvalu, a tiny Island halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, is drowning and fast. Today it's 13,000 residents are the most environmentally aware people on earth; their daily lives determined by the tides and the greasy salt water that gathers around their feet every day.
Due to rising sea waters caused by climate change, in the next decade Tuvalu could be a distant memory on an out-dated world map. The cap Sailor Iakopo is wearing on patrol a museum exhibit behind a glass cabinet, his uniform a star attraction in an ebay auction.