From the air, we can appreciate the salmon-pink hues of the coral reefs and their alternating channels of shallow and deep water. Those channels are fun to investigate with a snorkel, as Matt and Diyana did during our visit to Faaite.

It’s hard to imagine this is a living organism… which is responsible for all the land area in the Tuamotos. The mechanism? Wave action breaks old coral into tiny bits, and deposits it onto the land.

If the coral were to die, the Tuamotos would eventually disappear… fortunately the coral in the Tuamotos is one of the healthiest in the world. Their vibrancy has been a source of scientific study in an era when the world’s coral reefs are in decline due to the warming of the ocean.