Tristan da Cunha: The busiest place you’ve never seen : NPR

## Summary
He and his fishing partner, Dean Repetto, head to the harbor between 5:30 and 6 a.m. and will spend the full day at sea fishing for crawfish, the island’s main export. James Glass (middle), chief islander at the time, with his grandson Connor Glass-Green (left) and Clifton Repetto off the coast of Gough Island, which lies 223 miles south of Tristan da Cunha. Glass-Green would rather be out on the water with her husband, but instead, she’ll spend the day in the Fisheries Department’s container laboratory, measuring and dissecting four telescopefish — caught at Gough Island as part of scientific research into deep-sea species in Tristan da Cunha’s waters — to send to Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom. Shannon Swain (left) and Tristan Glass (middle), accompanied by the deputy head of Tristan da Cunha’s Conservation Department, Julian Repetto, watch a group of feral cattle at the Caves, on the southern side of the island.

## Article Content
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Photographer Julia Gunther and writer-filmmaker Nick Schönfeld have made multiple trips to Tristan da Cunha since 2023 to chronicle the rhythms of daily life. During their time there, NPR published their story “
The Okalolies of Old Year’s Night
,” which looked at the island’s unique New Year’s Eve tradition. They returned in 2025 to continue their work and help lead the expansion of the island’s community
archive.
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You’d be forgiven for thinking that life on Tristan da Cunha is quiet: a hammock-strung-between-two-coconut-palms kind of existence, somewhere in the shimmering blue Pacific. It is anything
but.
Tristan da Cunha is a rugged Scottish highland dropped into the middle of the South Atlantic. Towering volcanic cliffs rise from the sea. There are no palm trees or white sandy beaches here; instead, you’ll find potato fields, fierce winds and plenty of
activity.
Part of one of 14 British overseas territories, Tristan lies roughly halfway between South Africa and South America, over 1,500 miles from its nearest inhabited neighbor. Just 221 people live here — descendants of Dutch, American, English, St. Helenian, South African, Scottish and Italian sailors, settlers and shipwreck survivors who found refuge on the once-uninhabited island between the early 19th and early 20th centuries — in a single village called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the island’s only
settlement.
Shared self-reliance
Extreme isolation has shaped every part of life on Tristan. With no airport and only a handful of ships visiting every year, residents say they rely largely on themselves — and each other — to keep life on the island
running.
With so few residents, there are simply too few people for all the jobs that need doing. When someone is off island or unwell, others have to fill in, whether that means covering shifts, running errands or slaughtering a cow. The limited labor pool means skills are shared and tasks are stretched across families, making daily life a constant balancing
act.
Islanders carry timber and other construction materials from the beach at the Caves, a flat area on the south side of the island where Tristanians keep their feral cattle and where several families have huts that they use during the Christmas holidays. The huts hadn’t been renovated in 30 years and were in dire need of repairs. Once materials were off-loaded from a cargo boat, it took three days to carry them the mile to the huts.
Each Tristanian can keep two sheep. For most of the year, the animals roam the island’s northern pastures, hills and cliffs, but in the days before Christmas, they’re rounded up and brought to the shearing pens. Men head out early and spend long hours shearing as many sheep as they can. The next day, their families join them: Women bring food and drinks and help shear the remaining sheep, and children play or try to catch new lambs. Pictured here are brothers Dean and Randal Repetto (from left); Riaan Repetto; Dean’s partner, Anita Repetto; Riaan’s brother, Clifton Repetto; and Rodney Green (bottom right), as the men shear sheep on Dec. 16, 2023. Most of the wool ends up on the community’s potato fields as fertilizer, while the best wool is saved for knitting.
Fisherman Jason Green attaches lifting cables to the Island Pride as it’s prepared to be lowered into the water by crane at the start of a fishing day. He and his fishing partner, Dean Repetto, head to the harbor between 5:30 and 6 a.m. and will spend the full day at sea fishing for crawfish, the island’s main export.
James Glass (middle), chief islander at the time, with his grandson Connor Glass-Green (left) and Clifton Repetto off the coast of Gough Island, which lies 223 miles south of Tristan da Cunha. They were part of a team that spent 11 days on a fisheries expedition, placing camera traps and carrying out other monitoring work to assess the island’s marine and bird life. Gough is one of the islands that make up an archipelago itself called Tristan da Cunha, which also includes the island of Tristan da Cunha (the only inhabited island), the Nightingale Islands and Inaccessible Island.
The island’s cooperative spirit traces back to 1817. The United Kingdom’s Royal Navy annexed the island and stationed a garrison on Tristan in 1816. When the garrison was withdrawn in 1817, Cpl. William Glass, his wife, their two children and two English stonemasons chose to remain behind, founding what they called “the Firm” — a shared-labor model that still shapes Tristan’s collective approach to life
today.
Caption:
A photograph taken by Alfred Saunders during the 1933 visit of the RRS Discovery II to Tristan da Cunha, with the island’s settlement visible in the distance.
Credit: Tristan da Cunha Archive
Tristan da Cunha’s early “founding” document, drawn up in 1817 by Glass and his two compatriots, the stonemasons, after they chose to settle on the island. The agreement declared that

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
N/A

### Areas for Consideration
- Erosion is a persistent concern on Tristan, where rockfalls and landslides are common.

### Implications
- They returned in 2025 to continue their work and help lead the expansion of the island’s community archive.
- He and his fishing partner, Dean Repetto, head to the harbor between 5:30 and 6 a.m. and will spend the full day at sea fishing for crawfish, the island’s main export.
- The agreement declared that “the stock and stores of every description” should be shared equally and that “no member shall assume any superiority whatever, but all to be considered as equal in every respect.” Caption: Photo by Julia Gunther, taken at the British Library with permission/Tristan da Cunha Archive Tristan sits so far from any other landmass that it often seems to generate its own weather.
- Conditions can change hour by hour, reshaping the day’s work on the fly. “On Tristan,” says James Glass, a descendant of Cpl.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers tristan, island, green topics. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 2491.