On 7 June 2026, French Polynesia's President Moetai Brotherson announced that another 520,000 square kilometres of ocean around the Austral, Marquesas and Western Society Islands would receive the country's highest level of protection — no mining, no trawling, no industrial fishing, full stop. For a nation whose waters are already a byword for shark diving, it's the kind of announcement that reshapes what's swimming out there for decades to come.
520,000 square kilometres — bigger than France — just became off-limits to industrial fishing and mining.
The new zone brings French Polynesia's total fully protected ocean area to roughly 1.4 million square kilometres, about 30 percent of its exclusive economic zone. Named on the protection list: 20 shark species, including the critically endangered scalloped hammerhead and oceanic whitetip, alongside 22 bird species, 455 species of mollusk, 60 pelagic fish species, three sea turtle species and ten marine mammal species. Local pole-and-line fishing from boats under 12 metres is still permitted in designated artisanal zones, so the protections target industrial extraction rather than the communities who've fished these waters for generations.
What Divers Already Know
"This is our mission as Oceanians," Brotherson said of the expansion. "We also hope that it can inspire other countries, especially the larger ones, in the way they manage their relationship with the ocean."
The diving world already knows what's at stake here. Fakarava's South Pass, part of a UNESCO biosphere reserve in the Tuamotu Archipelago, draws divers from everywhere for its "wall of sharks" — hundreds of grey reef sharks stacked in the current at once. Oceanic whitetips and scalloped hammerheads, two of the species named explicitly in this protection, are exactly the pelagic encounters liveaboards through the Tuamotus and Marquesas are built around. A bigger no-take zone doesn't just look good on paper — it's a bet that the shark numbers drawing divers to French Polynesia today will still be there for the next generation of trips.
Image credit: Grey reef shark, French Polynesia