10 Vatu Coconut Crab

Vanuatu's coinage is issued under authority established at independence in 1980, when the New Hebrides condominium — jointly administered by Britain and France in one of colonial history's more awkward arrangements — dissolved into the Pacific's first jointly Anglo-French decolonization. The vatu replaced the New Hebrides franc and Australian dollar simultaneously. The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest terrestrial arthropod on earth and remains a significant food and cultural resource across the Vanuatu archipelago, where harvesting pressure has made it locally threatened on inhabited islands.