UNESCO's perfect atoll — a hundred kilometres of reef, one pass, and 700 sharks at dusk
Fakarava is the second-largest atoll in French Polynesia and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve for its underwater ecosystem. Two passes cut through the reef where the Pacific drains twice daily — creating current-driven dives through walls of fish, manta rays, and the infamous Tumakohua 'wall of sharks': hundreds of grey reef sharks hanging motionless in the current at dusk. Above water, the atoll is 60km long, barely 200m wide, and has a total population of around 900 people. Robert Louis Stevenson described it as 'the most strange, the most empty, the most beautiful place' he had visited.
Fakarava was charted by Russian explorer Bellingshausen in 1820. UNESCO designated it a Biosphere Reserve in 1977, one of the first in the Pacific, specifically to protect the extraordinary marine biodiversity of the passes. The current shark populations — largely intact apex predators — are a direct result of the low fishing pressure maintained by this designation.