Disappointment Islands High Sea

This offshore sector forms part of the broad maritime world of the Tuamotus. The archipelago is the largest atoll chain on Earth, although its coral land is broken into many small islands separated by channels and lagoons. About half a century's worth of atolls, more than fifty in all, are permanently inhabited; the others are used seasonally for copra making or as bases for fishing expeditions.

The sea is consequently both a boundary around each community and a working route between them. Fish taken from the atolls nearest Tahiti, including Rangiroa, Arutua and Apataki, supply the market at Papeete, while many residents rely on subsistence agriculture. Outside the sheltered lagoons, ocean travel demands careful reading of reefs and weather.

The Pacific voyages of European navigators from Magellan in 1521 onward entered this same scattered seascape, but most early encounters had no lasting political result because the islands remained within the sphere of Tahiti's Pōmare dynasty. The tropical climate has no sharply divided seasons, averaging about 26°C and receiving roughly 1,400 millimetres of rain each year. Because there are no lakes or rivers, settlements must gather that rainfall as their only fresh water.