Coral Reefs   I learn a lot when I travel, since the comment “travel broadens” doesn’t really refer to your waistline. I check things out in advance, then learn more on site. Still, I have to research a lot more afterward of what I’ve dipped my toe into. I do it both while still traveling, which is particularly helpful, since I’m still there, but a great deal I do at home. In any case, how did people manage before laptops?

On this trip, I already knew about Stevenson and Maugham in the Samoas, and Gauguin in Tahiti, and had to only flesh out those subjects. I was less aware about the HMS Bounty, and learned about that during and after Tahiti. But to me the most startling information about these Pacific islands is geographic, and I feel this is the most interesting highlight of the trip. I had seen maps of all four of the major islands of Greater Tahiti in advance, yet nothing impressed particularly. What, for instance, was so special about Bora Bora? About Moorea? Palm trees are palm trees, and beaches are beaches, right? I was therefore not prepared in the geographic field until arrival.

I had learned a bit about coral and reefs at the aquarium in Honolulu, how living organisms called polyps, or essentially tiny sea anemones, cover the surface of a reef that consists of the skeletal remains of numerous earlier generations. The reef also offers a habitat to many other sea creatures, which makes them a favorite of scuba divers. Very famous is the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, the largest barrier reef in the world. On this trip, I did comment on noticing the reef offshore off Apia, where the waves broke before later reaching the harbor, and near the Gauguin restaurant I saw some evidence of a reef around Tahiti. But to me these seemed little more than the equivalent of sandbanks, and didn’t pay more than superficial attention.

My learning curve zoomed upward when I reached Ra’iatea, and also Bora Bora and Moorea. All of a sudden, a barrier reef meant a lot more to me, also just what a motu was, and how about an atoll? What’s that? And precisely what is a lagoon? These have become fascinating geographic concepts to me, and are in my mind what makes these islands so interesting and attractive. And Darwin has something to do with it, too.

We’ll discuss the trip to these three other islands in detail later, but first we need to look at this spectacular picture from space, so that you can see what wasn’t clear to me in advance from maps about what’s so special here: Ra’iatea, Taha’a, Bora Bora from Space. If it doesn’t impress you on first sight, wait until we discuss it a bit. Disregard the couple of wispy clouds. What you are looking at is the middle phase of a long-term development process. This picture will tell you more than any map I’ve seen.

The triangular island at the bottom is Ra’iatea, the second largest in all of French Polynesia, but the largest of the Leeward Islands. Missing from this view is smaller Huahine, which would be nearby on the right (east).

That circular island above Ra’iatea is Taha’a. It’s so close that it will not surprise that it is thought that it was once part of Ra’iatea. Sometimes the pair are described as Ra’iatea/Taha’a. There was no reason for our ship to stop there (or in Huahine).

The other island at the top is Bora Bora, which we’ll get to later. Here, just notice how tiny it is, particularly the green area, which is the main island itself, and also how very close it is to the others. You will understand why I suggested making Bora Bora as one’s headquarters in the Leewards with just a side trip to Ra’iatea.

You may have noticed that in describing this view I’ve been neglecting the 900-pound gorilla in the room. Do you see something else of note in the view? Of course you do. These islands are wearing necklaces.

These are barrier reefs which in most cases surround the islands almost completely. Barrier reefs can be relatively straight, such as the Great Barrier Reef, but the uniqueness of the type of barrier reef seen here is the way they surround islands. They appear light blue simply because they’re just below the surface and the water is shallow there, as compared to the water on both sides.

These reefs grow in such a way that they can be considered “facing outward”. Nutrients that the coral polyps feed on come from the ocean currents, so the inward side of the reef is the back side. If you look closely, you’ll note some green areas on the reefs. Some stand out more than others, but they do appear all along the reef. These are motus, discussed below.

The ocean is outside the circular barrier reef, but the water that the reef encircles is a lagoon, also discussed below.

There are breaks in the reef. This inlet is called here in French a “passe”, so it’s also called a pass in English, although “inlet” would work just fine as well. Without passes, not only would large ships not be able to enter the lagoon, even the old traditional Tahitian canoes of any reasonable size wouldn’t be able to exit out to the ocean.

The passes you see are all natural. I was told when touring Ra’iatea that, since the island is large enough to have freshwater rivers, its reef has quite a few passes, since fresh water flowing out from the island prevents reef formation at that spot. All these passes improve accessibility to the island, and to all the others that have them.

For now, just give a quick look at Bora Bora on the map. It’s so tiny that it has no natural passes whatsoever. My understanding is that the one single pass you see was blasted through the reef by the US military during World War II to gain accessibility to the island. It was purposely put in the reef on the west side of Bora Bora opposite the main town. This is also the prettiest side. Without that pass, ships such as the Paul Gauguin wouldn’t be able to enter the lagoon. I suppose you can say that a barrier reef acts like a wall or fence around the island, and the passes are the gates. I never understood all this in advance from just reading the maps, even though I’m an experienced “mapnik”.

I find this all striking, and still it’s only part of this geographic story. We haven’t even discussed atolls yet. But let’s go back a bit and tell the story in order, starting with Charles Darwin.

CHARLES DARWIN & HMS BEAGLE When we listed famous ships making famous voyages (2009/12) I said that perhaps others could be added to that list, and here we have one: Charles Darwin and the Second Voyage of HMS Beagle. We’ll discuss the story in general first, and then the effect on Tahiti.

The HMS Beagle was built in 1820, and made three important scientific voyages. Charles Darwin was on only the famous second voyage. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that the second voyage was famous because Charles Darwin was on board.

The first voyage (1825-1830) went to the Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego area to survey the coasts. The Strait of Magellan, to the north of Tierra del Fuego, had been difficult to navigate. The HMS Beagle was able to identify the Beagle Channel (2004/5 & 2006/15) to the south of Tierra del Fuego and between it and a string of smaller islands. I had always assumed the Beagle Channel was named after the ship sometime afterward by locals, but that’s not the case. The captain named the channel after the ship on the spot. Also note that it was named before the Beagle became famous because of Darwin.

On the famous second voyage (1831-1836), the captain thought it wise to include a naturalist, a young Charles Darwin (he was 22-27 during the voyage). This was the ground-breaking scientific expedition. The Beagle again surveyed and charted coasts, and Darwin studied geology and natural history, and collected fossils and natural specimens. From England they sailed down the east coast of South America, then up the west coast, famously stopping at the Galápagos Islands. From there they stopped in Tahiti, then New Zealand, Sydney, Hobart and other places, including Cape Town, on the way back to England after circumnavigating the globe. Three years after returning, in 1839, Darwin published “The Voyage of the Beagle”, detailing his work, which brought him fame and respect. The voyage established Darwin as an eminent geologist, and his work in evolutionary biology resulted two decades later in his theory of natural selection and his “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

The third voyage (1837-1843) was to survey parts of the coast of Australia. I had always assumed that the city of Darwin, on Australia’s north coast, was again named locally in Darwin’s honor, but again that isn’t the case. As in the case with the Beagle Channel, it was the captain of the Beagle who named Darwin on the spot in 1839 after his famous passenger of the second voyage. At least I find it of interest that both the channel and the city do have direct connections with the ship and its voyages, and that neither was named after the fact.

Darwin was born in 1809 (on the very same day as Abraham Lincoln) and 2009 is his bicentennial. (And Lincoln’s.) A replica of the Beagle has been built that will recreate Darwin’s voyage with a crew of young international scientists.

DARWIN IN TAHITI When Darwin was in Tahiti in 1842, he made his way to a mountain peak and took a look over at Moorea. (Apparently he, too, thought that the best thing about Tahiti was the Moorea view.) From his high vantage point looking down at Moorea he could also see the barrier reef encircling it. He described his view of island and reef as “a picture in a frame”.

But Darwin wasn’t one to leave this as just a pretty view. He wondered how this unusual geographic combination came together, and the view inspired him to form and popularize his explanation of coral reefs and atolls, which is considered to be basically correct.

Darwin explained that there are several tropical island types, and that they develop in a sequence. They all started as oceanic volcanoes, so typical for the Pacific area especially. Over a long period of time, these volcanoes will subside, or settle or sink, subsidence being the opposite of uplift.

In their first phase, these islands are known as high islands, a term that indicates that they are volcanic in origin, and not low islands, which occur when sediments collect on coral reefs.

But in tropical zones, what had earlier been just high islands by themselves will develop into barrier reef islands, as coral over time builds a reef around them, the coral feeding on nutrients from the tropical waters. Ra’iatea and the others we’ve discussed are tropical high islands that have now moved into this second island-plus-reef stage.

If this second phase amazes, then more amazing still is what happens in the third phase. In temperate or arctic zones, when the reefless high islands subside, no trace is left once they’re gone. But in the tropics, when the high island part of a barrier reef island subsides, and totally disappears under water, the coral reef remains! This coral reef by itself is the third phase, and is what is known as an atoll (AT.tall), or atoll reef. To use Darwin’s analogy of a framed painting, when the painting is removed, the frame then encircles nothing. In other words, atolls are essentially markers showing where high islands used to be. Looking at it another way, a barrier reef island such as all of them we’ll be describing here is an intermediate stage—an “almost atoll”. But fear not that Bora Bora and the others will be gone soon. The entire three-stage process is estimated to take thirty million years.

Here’s an animation showing the three-stage process: Atoll Formation. The high island (green) becomes surrounded by a coral reef (tan & purple). Over time the reef grows and the high island subsides, leaving just the (atoll) reef, which can continue to grow.

The second and third stages are just a tropical phenomenon because that’s the only place coral grows. There are two major areas where you’ll find coral reefs, and therefore, barrier reef islands and atolls. The largest is the Indo-Pacific region, with 92% of the world’s total, including the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea, SE Asia/N Australia, the Western Pacific and Central Pacific. It does not include the Eastern Pacific bordering on the Americas, or coasts on either side of the Atlantic, since these areas are too cold. The exception to that is the Caribbean, which is the second largest area of coral reefs in the world, with 8% of the total, including the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

To the skeptic who will wonder about islands subsiding or not, I’ll refer again to three examples in Greater Tahiti. It is believed that Ra’iatea and Taha’a were once one island surrounded by the present reef. It would be logical that their separation shows that land is being lost. At present Huahine is in one piece only at low tide when a sandspit connects its two parts. High tide makes it into two islands even right now. And I would take a closer look at Tahiti itself. We may have to wait several million years to find out, but doesn’t it seem that Tahiti Iti could possibly separate from Tahiti Nui?

There are two more terms to understand when visiting islands such as these. Refer back to the space view as we elaborate. I always thought I knew vaguely what a lagoon was, but now it becomes quite clear; it’s the water inside a ringlike coral reef. More formally, it’s a body of shallow salt water separated from the sea by a coral reef. But we have to visualize a lagoon in two ways. In the second phase, the lagoon is O-shaped, surrounding the high island and within the O-shaped reef, but when the atoll phase is reached, the lagoon is the only thing within the reef. On the other hand, some coral reefs may have never completed the circle, and atolls can deteriorate and may no longer completely encircle a lagoon, so we have to say more accurately that a reef or atoll may encircle a lagoon completely or partially.

Finally, we have the motu, a kind of islet. It is presumably what is meant by the term “low island”, since it’s essentially sand and vegetation, and doesn’t have much altitude. But a motu is not just any small island. It’s specifically a small island sitting on top of a coral reef, presumably caused by sand drifting over the reef, and then becoming fixed. There can be a number of smaller motus, or motus can run quite some distance along the reef. I also understand that geologically, a fringing coral reef will tend to be raised as the high island subsides. This would seemingly promote further motu formation.

This is a picture from space of an atoll in the Pacific. A Pacific Atoll. The lagoon has lost its high island. It seems to be connected to the ocean by two unusual-looking passes. There is either one continuous motu on this atoll, or perhaps two motus separated by these passes.

I remember that I first heard the word atoll as part of the name Eniwetok Atoll, the location of the nuclear testing from 1948-1958, including hydrogen bomb testing. I find it’s located in the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific. The few inhabitants had been evacuated, and then after the area was decontaminated, the people began returning in the 1970’s. 820 people now live there. To conform to local pronunciation, it’s now officially spelled Enewetak. This is not a picture, but a good-quality map: Eniwetok Atoll. The coral reef seems a bit sporadic as it encircles the lagoon, which is 80 km (50 mi) in circumference. Although there don’t seem to be many motus visible, I understand there are actually 40, yet their total land area is less than 6 km² (2.3 mi²).

Ra'iatea   Leaving Papeete that first night, we were headed from the Windwards to the Leewards, specifically to Ra’iatea. Although the longest distance, all the way to Bora Bora is, as mentioned earlier, 210 km (140 mi), Tahiti to Ra’iatea is 193 km (120 mi), so you’ve already covered most of that distance. It would then be a short hop to Bora Bora, and the return trip would stop in Moorea, next door to Tahiti, also breaking up the return. As usual, this first leg to Ra’iatea was done in the dark, “like thieves in the night”.

As mentioned earlier, Ra’iatea is the second largest in all of French Polynesia, but the largest of the Leeward Islands. You can see Huahine from the shore in Ra’iatea, although it isn’t quite as close as Moorea is to Tahiti. Ra’iatea is also the second most populous after Tahiti, but it only has about 12,000 people. It’s pronounced ra.’i.a.TE.a, although frankly, most people leave out the glottal stop, slurring two syllables into one, with a resulting pronunciation that sounds like Rye-atea.

Refer back to the space picture of Ra’iatea, which is the island at the bottom. Look at the upper end of its east coast, and you’ll see the pass we went through in order to dock at the main town, right opposite it. This is how the reef and its passes control life on such an island.

I had signed up for a bus tour, primarily in order to see the historical monument, the marae. We drove down the east coast, stopping at some nice views. This, however, shows a very practical view: Motu and Coral Reef. In the foreground the blue water of the lagoon gets lighter over the coral reef, which doesn’t break the surface, but you can see the white line of waves breaking over it. You couldn’t want a better picture of a motu, although it’s rather small. And in the background is nearby Huahine.

We then stopped at the marae on the SE coast, and ended up on the south coast, where they had a standard arrangement to stop at a private home, which had a roofed-over patio on the side with picnic benches. We were served several kinds of local fruit juices, plus slice fruit, such as sliced papaya and pineapple. Some family members played music. On the way back north, we cut across the center of the island and stopped at a botanical garden.

TAPUTAPUATEA MARAE Polynesians believed that Ra’iatea was the birthplace of the world. It was always regarded as the center of Polynesia, not only the cultural center but the religious center. And the center of the religion, the mother of all maraes in Polynesia was Taputapuatea Marae. Look at the name, break it down, and that should be self-evident (doing that also makes it easier to say and remember).

Tapu is like kapu or taboo. Once again, taboo or forbidden in the religious sense. It’s reduplicated, so it’s like calling this marae the holy of holies. This was the ancient Polynesian Western Wall, its Vatican. That a marae is built of stones, the image of Jerusalem’s Western Wall is particularly applicable. Yet with the arrival of western culture, all the maraes declined and were abandoned, even this, the most important of all. Today, the grounds are a park, and the structures were restored in the 1960’s and again in 1994.

There are five platforms at this site; this is the main one: Taputapuatea Marae. It’s 45 m (150 ft) long, 9 m (30 ft) wide, and 3.3 m (11 ft) tall. Although historically, this is the most important Polynesian cultural monument, on a practical basis it becomes the second most important one after the stupendous statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). It also isn’t all that visually impressive to see, even if you do realize its history. The ground level here is a bit raised, so you can’t see the reef, but on the right you do see Huahine again.

You might want to dismiss the importance of this site until you realize that, given its prestige, it was the point of departure of the Polynesian migrations that discovered and settled all the locations in the Polynesian Triangle, east to Rapa Nui, south to Aoteroa (New Zealand), north to Hawai’i, and to all the places in between. Therefore, when last November, I stood at Ka Lae (South Point) at the southern end of the Big Island of Hawai’i, the spot where Polynesians first arrived in the Hawaiian Islands (2008/25), THIS was where they had left from.

Look at the space view again, and at the two passes on the east side of Ra’iatea south of the one our ship went in on. The first one is opposite a major river and bay on the mainland; the second one is opposite the peninsula the marae is on. It was pointed out at the marae that the voyages left from this area, and without the passes, sending canoes large enough for such long journeys would have been impossible.

The settlers on these migrations brought with them their culture and religion, which meant that new maraes had to be built at the new locations. It is therefore significant that all important maraes in the settled areas had to include at least one stone from Taputapuatea Marae. Just picture these stones going out in all directions across the Pacific from Ra’iatea, birthplace of the world, center of Polynesia.

But if you aren’t into history and geography, you’ll miss all this. You should be at least somewhat aware in advance of history to make it really sink in at the time; absent that, at very least listen attentively to the guide, although by then it may sound too superficial to be meaningful. And then there’ll be those thinking instead about that papaya and pineapple coming up. And how about a rest stop? (The Travel Cynic speaketh again.)

We stayed a second day in the area, but this was purely a “vacation” type of activity, with no deeper significance than that. The ship sailed the next morning for a couple of hours up the reef to a point off NE Taha’a, the other half of the Ra’iatea/Taha’a complex. It anchored offshore for a day at a private motu owned by the shipping company, Motu Mahana, for a barbecue. Some people made the whole day into a beach day, but many of us, including me, just took the tender to the little dock to stay for a couple of hours for the meal. It was so-o-o hot. There was a roofed-over buffet and at the end these workers were standing over the barbecue fires. I don’t know how they did it. But I settled at one of the round picnic tables under an umbrella, and socialized. There was an interesting couple that I thought was from the US, until they said they were from Nova Scotia, which goes to prove my point about CanUS. There was a young couple from Switzerland. They spoke English at the table, but used French in Switzerland. That will make sense, but let me say that he was from Portugal (Lisbon) and she was from Italy (Calabria). I love multi-lingual people.

We sailed to Bora Bora in the late afternoon, which means we were in three locations in one day: we started in Ra’iatea, spent the day at the motu, and ended up in nearby Bora Bora. I said we had on this trip only two daylight sailings, both being only partial days. They involved going to Bora Bora, and later leaving it, and both were memorable.

This late afternoon sailing westward around the top of Bora Bora toward the sunset and then turning back eastward into the pass into its lagoon was particularly pleasant.