10°25′S 161°00′W
Manihiki
South Pacific · 2023
Introduction
The “Island of Pearls”: a ring of coral islets in the Northern Cook Islands, home to about two hundred people and to the lagoon behind the country’s black pearl industry. Cyclones, depopulation and rising seas now test this flat atoll.
- Population
- 207
- Area
- 4 km²spread over dozens of small islets
- Settled
- c. 1000 AD
- Isolation
- 1,200 kmfrom Rarotonga
- Country
- Cook Islands
- Language
- Rakahanga-Manihiki
About the island
Manihiki is known informally as the “Island of Pearls”. It is an atoll of tiny coral islets forming a ring around a deep blue lagoon, and it is flat: the atoll sits on a mountain rising 4,000 metres from the ocean floor, but only reaches about 4 metres above sea level.
Manihiki is the second largest island in the Northern Group, over 1,200 kilometres from Rarotonga. Two villages, Tauhunu and Tukao, hold the whole community. Around them, the lagoon provides fish, and a pearl industry that put this atoll on the world map.
Photography
- 4m
- Highest point of the atoll above sea level
- 1,200km+
- Distance from Rarotonga
- 207
- Residents
10°25′S 161°00′W
© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
10°25′S 161°00′WOver 1,200 km from Rarotonga, in the Northern Cook Islands.
Visited in 2023
