Kauehi Coast

Kauehi's coast surrounds a low coral atoll in the Tuamotu archipelago, near Fakarava and Raraka. Narrow islands and reef flats separate its lagoon from the open Pacific. The Arikitamiro pass provides an entrance through the reef, giving this apparently continuous ring of breakers a navigable opening. From offshore, the low rim can conceal the distinction between open water, reef and lagoon until a vessel approaches closely.

In 1835 Robert FitzRoy recorded Kauehi during the voyage of HMS Beagle. The name Cavahi used in accounts of the voyage represented a rendering of the island's indigenous name. The encounter brought this particular atoll into the expanding European survey of the Tuamotus, an archipelago whose many low islands posed persistent difficulties of recognition and navigation. Kauehi's appearance in those records brought the atoll's existing name into the charts and narratives of oceanic exploration, connecting local island geography with the long routes followed by surveying ships across the Pacific.