Something’s Fishy Around Here

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A fish sandwich? Think again. You may want to leave the fish on the reef, if you live in Mangareva.  There’s a good chance it may be ciguateric and you may get ciguatera poisoning.  Ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) is seafood …

Acropora Gardens

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Mangareva contains more diverse coral habitats than anything we have seen to date. Parts of the outside rim of the atoll are emergent. The cross sectional profile starts with a classic reef flat, 10 m wide in places and often …

Coral Bommies and Patch Reefs

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Navigation hazards are many in Hao Atoll, due to a myriad of submerged patch reefs that rise to the surface from the 60 m deep lagoon floor. These reefs are distributed in a seemingly random pattern. Some are circular and …

Gambier, 800 feet above sea level

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After a 3.5 hour flight on the Golden Eye, we reached Hao to begin our third research mission in French Polynesia at Gambier. Hao is a large (56 km X 15 km), low-lying coral atoll at the southeastern end of …