If you take a cruise in French Polynesia, you will be sailing amongst some of the greatest wonders that Mother Nature has gifted to us…Perhaps you don’t know that what happened and is still happening beneath your boat, is the result of a remarkable natural phenomenon…
How our islands were born A little bit of geology !
All our islands were formed millions of years ago after underwater volcanic eruptions gave rise to magma flows that solidified when they reached the surface.
Once the islands had been created, Mother Nature set to work. Coral barrier reefs were formed and continue to grow, attached to the submarine magma. It is a never-ending process since the formation of the islands and the story does not stop there. As the coral reefs grew in size, they gave rise to bands of sand, capable of supporting life, at the same time as the islands progressively sank, until they may totally disappear below the surface after millions of years..
At that point, the island as such disappears below the waves and a coral atoll is left behind.
The oldest islands are the atolls that you will find in the Tuamotu Archipelago for they are between 40 and 63 million years old.
In this archipelago, as elsewhere, the islands continue to sink but more and more rapidly. At a certain point the coral may form too slowly to support the emerged surface and islands are swallowed up.
The Society Archipelago is 25 million years’ old while the Marquesas go back 17 million years; the Gambiers and the Australs are both 25 million years’ old.
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