Polynesian Navigation

Polynesian navigation is a system of navigation used by Polynesians to make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean.

Polynesian navigation device showing directions of winds, waves and islands, c. 1904

Navigators traveled to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice, often in the form of song. In order to locate directions at various times of day and year, Polynesian navigators memorize important facts: the motion of specific stars, so where they would rise and set on the horizon of the ocean; weather and the seasons of travel; wildlife species (which gather at particular positions); the direction, size and, speed of ocean waves; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for approaching harbors.

Outrigger canoes at Waikiki beach, late 1800s

These wayfinding techniques along with their unique outrigger canoe construction methods have been kept as guild secrets. Generally each island maintained a guild of navigators who had very high status and in times of famine or difficulty these navigators could trade for aid or evacuate people to neighboring islands. To this day, the original methods of Polynesian Navigation are still taught in the Polynesian outlier of Taumako Island in the Solomon Islands.