Tauere

Tauere
NASA image of Tauere (north is below)
Waters	Pacific Ocean
archipelago	Tuamotu Archipelago
Geographical location	17 ° 22 ′  S , 141 ° 29 ′  W Coordinates: 17 ° 22 ′  S , 141 ° 29 ′  W
Number of islands	-
Main island	-
Land area	2 km²
Lagoon area	60 km²
Residents	5 (2007)

Tauere , Taouere, towere or Te Putua , old name: San Simon y Judas Resolution Iceland , is a small, uninhabited, centrally located in the Tuamotu archipelago located Atoll in the Pacific Ocean . The next inhabited island, Amanu , is around 90 km to the southeast.

geography

From the air, Tauere shows an almost square shape with a diagonal of around 7.5 km. The atoll's rather deep lagoon is surrounded by four islands densely covered with tropical vegetation and numerous sandbanks. Between the islands and the sandbanks, numerous shallow hoa ensure water exchange with the ocean. However, there is no passage between ocean and lagoon that can be navigated by boats. The islands rise just a few meters above sea level and consist of coral sand and debris. The total land area of ​​the reef islands is around 2 km², but the lagoon covers more than 60 km².

flora

The large-scale plantation of coconut plantations for copra production completely changed the vegetation of the islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But there are still remnants of the original flora , especially in the southwest of the largest motu . It corresponds to the typical composition also found on other lower atolls of the Tuamotus. The beach vegetation consists of creeping plants as well as bushy Guettarda speciosa and Scaevola taccada . The forest adjoining inland consists mainly of Pisonia grandis , Pemphis acidula , Heliotropium foertherianum (synonym: Tournefortia argentea) , coconut palms and pandanus trees. In the meantime, the plantations are no longer being maintained, so that a secondary forest of pisonia, pandanus and bush vegetation is gradually reclaiming the cultivated areas. Nevertheless, the coconut palm is still the plant that shapes the landscape today.

history

Tauere was once inhabited, as evidenced by the remains of two ceremonial complexes of the Polynesian natives. Remains of the Marae Rangihoa can still be seen on the motu at the western tip, today only a scattered pile of stones. Peter Buck , who took the schooner Moana on a trip to Tauere in 1934, describes the marae as follows:

“On Tauere, the construction of the houses and canoes still follows the contemporary model. A young man took me to the Marae of Rangihoa, where the god Tahiri was once worshiped. A few stones marked the place, but my guide dug a little in the sand and pulled out a skull. "

- Peter H. Buck (Te Rangi Hīroa)

At the southern tip, facing the lake, there was once the Marae Kahoreva, of which hardly any traces are left today.

In some publications the opinion is expressed that Tauere is identical to the island "La Decena" discovered by Pedro Fernández de Quirós in 1606. The same is said of other islands (e.g. Mehetia ) so that there is no proof for this thesis.

The first European explorer is therefore Domingo de Boenechea , who sighted the island on October 28, 1772 from his ship Aguila . He gave her the name "San Simon y Judas" (abbreviated as "San Simon" on old maps), after the church patrons Simon Zelotes and Judas Thaddäus . Boenechea describes Tauere as a flat island covered with coconut palms, medium-sized trees and bushes, from which smoke rose, a sign that it was inhabited. Lieutenant Tomás de Gayangos had a boat launched and wanted to go ashore with several armed men, but could not find a safe entrance through the reef. Around 20 to 25 warriors dressed only in loincloths gathered on the beach and threatened to swing clubs. Women, children and the elderly were not to be seen. There was no contact with the residents. Boenechea saw two canoes lying on the bank with several people.

On August 11, 1773, James Cook passed the island on his way from New Zealand to Tahiti. Cook named it Resolution after his ship , since he believed himself to be the first to discover it. Georg Forster writes about it:

“On the morning of August 11, we saw a low island that seemed four miles long and as shallow as the sea. Only here and there one saw individual groups of trees, as it were grown out of the sea, under which the high peaks of the coconut palm towered far above the others. After such a long, morose journey, the mere sight of the country was something pleasant to us, and although there was nothing particularly beautiful to be seen on the whole island, it appealed to the eye because of its naturally simple appearance [...] The island became a resolution island called."

- Georg Forster

The occurrence of scurvy on his escort ship Adventure caused Cook to sail on to Tahiti without exploring the island , as Tauere seemed to him too small to supply the ships with the urgently needed food and fresh water.

Politics and administration

Dr. Harald A. Rehder, zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC , visited Tauere in August 1964. At that time, the island was still a functioning community, the village was inhabited. He collected some mollusks on the edge of the reef . But they were species that are common throughout the Tuamotu Archipelago.

In 1983 only 3 people lived on Tauere and today the atoll is no longer permanently inhabited. However, residents of the neighboring atolls come several times a year to harvest the copra. On the Motu in the northwest there are some abandoned buildings of the former village, which are only occasionally used for copra harvest. The island has no functioning infrastructure and can hardly be reached by tourists.

Tauere is today by the borough ( commune associée the community) Amanu Hao ( Commune de Hao managed) and politically belongs to French Polynesia .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dieter Mueller-Dombois & F. Raymond Fosberg: Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands , New York 1998, pp. 434–437
2. ^ Peter Henry Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa): Vikings of the Sunrise , New York 1938, p. 190
3. ↑ Bolton Glanvill Corney: The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain in 1772–1776 , Vol. 2, London 1914; it contains the journal of Don Raimundo Bonacorsi, lieutenant on the Aguila (p. 32–34)
4. ↑ Georg Forster: Journey of discovery to Tahiti and the South Seas 1772–1775 , reprint 1988, Stuttgart-Vienna, pp. 106–107
5. ↑ James Cook: A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World - Performed in His Majesty's Ships the Resolution and Adventure, in the Years 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775 , London 1777
6. ↑ Harald A. Rehder: Through the Tuamotos to Pitcairn for Mollusks , Hawaiian Shell News, 1966, pp. 1 ff.
7. ↑ Internet portal of the French Polynesia Administration  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Brief description and picture ( memento from December 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• Spanish navigator (English)