The Geography of Mata Nui Is Fairly Plausible, Actually

Over the years, fans have often complained (or joked) about the “fact” that the geography of Mata Nui is highly implausible or even impossible, because of how many wildly different biomes there are and how they are arranged in relation to each other. Once it was revealed that the island was artificially created by the GSR’s camouflage mechanism, people started to cite its unnatural geography as foreshadowing of its unnatural nature (and IIRC it has been confirmed that this was the intention of the creative team in 2001).

Only the thing is, as far as I can tell, Mata Nui’s geography really isn’t that unnatural or implausible! And today I felt the need to correct some of the assumptions that lead people to the conclusion that it is. (Of course, I’m not an ecologist, so if anybody here is highly knowledgeable about environmental science and spots errors in my analysis, they’re more than welcome to correct my corrections.) Here are the complaints people usually make:

1) The hottest part of the island is also the northernmost part. Shouldn’t it be the coldest? This is the most obviously invalid of the criticisms listed here, but I’ve still seen fans make it a few times. Most BIONICLE fans live in the northern hemisphere, so we’re used to thinking north = cold and south = hot, because if we travel north we approach the North Pole, while if we travel south we approach the equator. But for people living in the southern hemisphere, south = cold (the South Pole) and north = hot (the equator)! So there’s no reason why Po-Wahi should be the coldest Wahi, once we consider that Mata Nui might not be in Aqua Magna’s northern hemisphere. AND even if it was in the northern hemisphere, it’s such a small island that the difference in position relative to the equator between its northern and southern tip is negligible.

AND on TOP of that, I don’t think it’s even true that Po-Wahi is the hottest Wahi! Mata Nui’s climate is consistently tropical (because it’s based on Polynesian islands): Le-Wahi is tropical rainforest, Ga-Wahi tropical grassland, Po-Wahi tropical desert, etc. The whole island is hot, Po-Wahi is just the driest (and not apparently much drier than Onu-Wahi next door to it, which appears equally bare of plant life on its surface); with the exception of Ko-Wahi, which is cold and snowy because of its elevation, not because of its latitude. Which brings me to the next section:

2) It’s implausible/impossible that a parched desert, a large swampy jungle, a grassland, and a permanently snowy/icy climate could exist side by side on a small island! Actually, this sort of abrupt transition between biomes isn’t so very uncommon in real life. The island of Madagascar, off the top of my head, has desert in the southwest corner and lush jungle in the northeastern two-thirds, despite being surrounded by water on both sides. It all depends on the weather systems around the region. With Mata Nui, it’s fairly easy to imagine: For whatever complex climactic reason, the island is buffeted by dry winds from the northeast and moist, cloud-carrying winds from the southwest. The moist winds bring large amounts of rain to Le-Wahi, creating a rainforest there, and some of those clouds make it all the way to Ga-Wahi where they deposit enough rain to water a savanna. However, the slopes of Ihu and Mangai serve as a barrier that blocks any of these clouds from reaching Po-Wahi and Onu-Wahi. As I said earlier, the mountains of Ko-Wahi (quite naturally clustered around the center of island, as is usual for volcanic islands) are cold only because of their elevation.

Of course, none of these explanations are necessary, because it really is true that the GSR created the island artificially and presumably could make extremely unnatural-seeming geography if it wanted to. But I think it’s still cool to think that the ecology of Mata Nui could have arisen naturally. (Unless I’m wrong; again, my knowledge of meteorology and ecology is extremely basic, and any experts in the comments may well force me to eat my words shortly.)

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Great analysis!
Funnily enough, a bionicle youtube channeler made some very similar points in a video he made, I’ll link him below. :slight_smile:

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