Nukuoro Atoll

Nukuoro is an almost perfectly circular atoll south of Pohnpei, another Polynesian outlier in Micronesia with its own language, around forty islets around a lagoon and a few hundred people. It is best known outside the region for the wooden figures carved there in the nineteenth century, spare abstract forms that ended up in European museums and influenced modernist sculpture. The atoll's language, Nukuoro, is spoken by only a few hundred people and is classed as endangered.

Background

The atoll is a municipality of Pohnpei state and the second southernmost in the country, after Kapingamarangi. Its total area, lagoon included, is 40 square kilometres, but land makes up only 1.7 square kilometres, split among more than 40 islets on the northern, eastern and southern sides. The lagoon is 6 kilometres across. In 2007 the population was 372, living mainly from fishing, animal husbandry, taro and copra, and black pearl oyster farming now adds income. The atoll has a 4-room schoolhouse; pupils older than 14 move to Pohnpei for high school. The carved figures, of breadfruit wood and from 30 to 215 cm in size, represent gods and deified ancestors linked to the five Nukuoro family groups.

Source: Wikipedia, "Nukuoro"

What's there

• The circular lagoon - an unusually regular ring of islets.
• The Polynesian language - a tongue distinct from the rest of the state.
• The carved figures - the abstract wooden forms now in European museums.
• The isolation - a community reached only by irregular ship.

When to go

December to March is the drier season. The supply ship runs irregularly and schedules shift. Trips take weeks rather than days.

Before you go

There is no air service and the ship is the only way in and out, running every few weeks at best. Accommodation is with families. The famous carvings are all in museums abroad, not on the atoll.

Nearby

Kapingamarangi is south, and Pohnpei is north.

Key facts