Upolu

The ship was conducting a survey of waters off the island of Upolu when it struck a reef and caught fire during a bout of rough and windy weather.

A forensic pathologist was due to travel from Fiji to Apia, a city of 36,000 people on Samoa’s second-largest island, Upolu, to conduct an autopsy later this month.

For many years, Tafuna’i was the only clinical lecturer at the National University of Samoa, a tiny medical school on the island of Upolu.

The offending occurred between 1994 and April last year involving 13 Samoans from three villages on the island of Upolu.

The deaths sent shockwaves across the tiny archipelagic nation, not just on Savai’i, the largest island, but also on Upolu, home to the capital, Apia, and most of the country’s 200,000 people.