Farewell to Chad Kālepa Baybayan, Polynesian Voyager & Celestial Navigator

Chad Kālepa Baybayan, who with his daughter Kala Baybayan Tanaka gave a plenary lecture on traditional Polynesian navigation at the 235th AAS meeting in Honolulu in January 2020, has died at age 65. His passing was announced by the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center, where he was navigator in residence, and the University of Hawaʻi, where he was an alumnus.

Kālepa and Kala entitled their lecture "He Lani Ko Luna, A Sky Above: In Losing the Sight of Land You Discover the Stars." Astrobites author Kate Storey-Fisher summarized their talk as follows on AAS Nova:

Father-daughter speakers Kālepa Baybayan and Kala Baybayan Tanaka led us on a seafaring journey in their plenary talk. As navigators with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Baybayan and Tanaka use the stars for navigation by sea, tapping into indigenous astronomical knowledge and traditions.

Baybayan began by telling the story of humanity spreading across the globe, first by land and later by sea. Around 4,000 years ago, the first seacraft was developed, and the art and science of navigation was born. One seafaring community, the Lapita, spread from Southeast Asia to archipelagos throughout the Pacific, leaving behind a trail of broken pottery that allowed researchers to trace their trajectory.

In the early 1970s, the Polynesian Voyaging Society was established, and they set out to demonstrate indigenous navigation practices. Baybayan was captain of the Hōkūleʻa, a historically accurate Polynesian canoe, which set out from Hawaiʻi in 1976. Using only Polynesian navigation techniques, the voyagers navigated to Tahiti in 33 days. The navigation system relies on astronomy, meteorology, and mathematics — the same foundations as those used today.

Tanaka became hooked on sea navigation as a high schooler after a 24-hour voyage with her father. She learned to use the swells and the stars as guides, and even to recognize the sound of the breathing of dolphins swimming alongside them. In 2013, she participated in the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage, in which over 245 voyagers circumnavigated the globe (in many legs) to educate communities on living sustainably. Together they traveled 60,000 nautical miles and visited 150 ports. Tanaka now educates young people on the stellar compass and the history of voyaging.

Bayaban and Tanaka concluded with an emphasis on the science that grounds their work. They use the same star maps as astronomers — just labelled with the stars’ Hawaiʻian names.

We weren't able to record Bayaban and Tanaka's presentation at AAS 235, but you can watch Bayaban's 2013 TEDxMaui talk on the same topic.

In a statement issued by ʻImiloa, Larry Kimura, one of the science center's developers who worked alongside Baybayan for years, said, “The impact of his life’s work is evidenced in so many ways all throughout the community and while he will be sorely missed, we are committed to continuing his work of educating future generations about the wealth and applicability of our ancestral knowledge of wayfinding to ongoing pursuit of new knowledge to the benefit of our community and our Hawaiʻi.”