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Sunset over a formerly mined area — known as the extraction zone — on the French Polynesian island of Makatea.

The World Through a Lens

The Perilous Hunt for Coconut Crabs on a Remote Polynesian Island

On Makatea, an uplifted coral atoll marred by decades of mining, searching for crabs often requires gambling with the treacherous terrain.

Sunset over a formerly mined area — known as the extraction zone — on the French Polynesian island of Makatea. Credit...

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Photographs by Eric Guth

Text by Jennifer Kingsley

• May 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

We meet Adams Maihota outside his house in the dead of night. A crab hunter, he wears white plastic sandals, board shorts, a tank top and a cummerbund to hold lengths of twine. He picks a sprig of wild mint and tucks it behind his ear for good luck.

The photographer Eric Guth and I follow Mr. Maihota’s blazing headlamp into the forest in search of coconut crabs, known locally as kaveu . They are the largest land invertebrate in the world, and, boiled or stir-fried with coconut milk, they are delicious. Since the cessation of phosphate mining here in 1966, they have become one of Makatea’s largest exports.

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Coconut crabs (Birgus latro) are the largest land invertebrate in the world and seem perfectly adapted to an island full of holes. (They can climb just about anything.)

It’s ankle-breaking terrain. We negotiate the roots of pandanus trees and never-ending feo, a Polynesian term for the old reef rocks that stick up everywhere. Vegetation slaps our faces and legs, and our skin becomes slick with sweat.

The traps, which Mr. Maihota laid earlier that week, consist of notched coconuts tied to trees with fibers from their own husks. When we reach one, we turn off our lights to approach quietly. Then, Mr. Maihota pounces.

A moment later, he stands up with a sky-blue crab pedaling its ten legs in broad circles. Even with its fleshy abdomen curled under the rest of its body, the animal is much longer than the hunter’s hand.

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A crab’s pincers can easily break fingers, so before placing them in his pack, Mr. Maihota grabs some twine from his cummerbund and wraps the animal to immobilize it.

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Each one is like a little escape artist. “He knows how to undo it all,” says Mr. Maihota, “and after that, he will pinch you in the back.”

Makatea, part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia, sits in the South Pacific about 150 miles northeast of Tahiti. It’s a small uplifted coral atoll, barely four and a half miles across at its widest point, with steep limestone cliffs that rise as high as 250 feet straight out of the sea.

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About two-thirds of Makatea is still primary forest, an ecosystem that is increasingly rare in the Tuamotu Archipelago.

From 1908 until 1966, Makatea was home to the largest industrial project in French Polynesia: Eleven million tons of phosphate-rich sand were dug out and exported for agriculture, pharmaceuticals and munitions. When the mining ceased, the population fell from around 3,000 to less than 100. Today, there are about 80 full-time residents. Most of them live in the central part of the island, close to the ruins of the old mining town, which is now rotting into the jungle.

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Makatea’s old mining town has fallen into disrepair.

One-third of Makatea consists of a maze of more than a million deep, circular holes, known as the extraction zone — a legacy of the mining operations. Crossing into that area, especially at night, when coconut crabs are active, can be deadly. Many of the holes are over 100 feet deep, and the rock ledges between them are narrow. Still, some hunters do it anyway, intent on reaching the rich crab habitat on the other side.

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The extraction zone, viewed from above. During the mining era, laborers dug phosphate rich sand out of these naturally occurring limestone cylinders. Now they stand empty and pose a great risk to anyone trying to cross through the area.

One evening before sunset, a hunter named Teiki Ah-scha meets us in a notoriously dangerous area called Le Bureau, so named for the mining buildings that used to be there. Wearing flip-flops, Mr. Ah-scha trots around the holes and balances on their edges. When he goes hunting across the extraction zone, he comes home in the dark with a sack full of crabs on his back.

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Teiki Ah-scha is comfortable enough in the dangerous environment to walk around in flip-flops.

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A set of cavernous holes.

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Teiki Ah-scha skirts the edge of the once-active phosphate extraction zone.

Mr. Maihota, too, used to hunt this way — and he tells me that he misses it. But ever since his wife fell into a shallow hole a few months before our visit in 2019, she has forbidden him to cross the extraction zone. Instead, he sets traps around the village.

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Coconut crabs are adventurous omnivores. They eat fruits, nuts, vegetation and carrion, as well as the occasional bird or rat.

Coconut crabs inhabit a broad range, from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to the Pitcairn Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. They were part of local diets long before the mining era. The largest specimens, “les monstres,” can be the length of your arm and live for a century.

There hasn’t been a population study on Makatea, so the crab’s conservation status is unclear — though at night, rattling across the rocks, they seem to be everywhere.

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The pastel hues of a coconut crab belie its terrific power; these pincers are stronger than the biting force of most land predators.

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Crabs are sold at the local grocery store, but they can also be used as currency. Five average-size crabs earn about $50 in store credit.

When we catch crabs that aren’t legal — either females or those less than six centimeters across the carapace — Mr. Maihota lets them go.

If the islanders are not careful, he says, the crabs might not be around for future generations. In many places across the Indo-Pacific, the animals have been hunted to the point of extirpation, or local extinction.

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Reretini Viritua wanders through the forest near her home to set coconut crab traps.

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Crab traps are made from fallen coconuts.

Makatea is at a crossroads. Half a century after the first mining era, there is a pending proposal for more phosphate extraction. Though the island’s mayor and other supporters cite the economic benefits of work and revenue, opponents say that new industrial activity would destroy the island, including its fledgling tourism industry.

“We cannot make her suffer again,” one woman tells me, invoking the island as a living being.

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Makatea’s only port, called Temao, was built during the mining era. Remnants of the crane and loading docks still stand.

Still, it’s hard to make a living here. “There is no work,” Mr. Maihota says, as we stand under the stars and drip sweat onto the forest floor. He doesn’t want to talk about the mine. The previous month, he shipped out 70 coconut crabs for $10 each to his buyers in Tahiti.

In popular hunting spots, hunters say the crabs are smaller or fewer, but hunters rely on the income and nobody has the full picture of how the population is doing overall.

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Coconut crabs must be carefully bound and gently packed in moist leaves to ensure their survival on their voyage to Tahiti.

We visit Mr. Maihota’s garden the next morning where the crabs are sequestered in individual boxes to keep them from attacking each other. He’ll feed them coconut and water to purge their systems, since, in the wild, they eat all manner of food, including carrion.

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Captive crabs are kept separate to protect them from each other. Hunters feed them coconut and water to purge their systems before sending them to their buyers.

By daylight, their shells are rainbows of purple, white, orange, along with many shades of blue. For now at least — without mining, and while harvests are still sustainable — they seem perfectly adapted to Makatea, holes and all.

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The extraction zone at sunset.

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The color of some crabs matches that of the sky, though they turn red when they are cooked.

Eric Guth is a documentary photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. You can follow his work on Instagram .

Jennifer Kingsley is a Canadian writer and journalist. You can follow her work on Twitter and Instagram .

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram , Twitter and Facebook . And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.

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Source : food