20 Poe rava Marquesas Islands

The poe rava — black pearl — became the economic backbone of the Marquesas after traditional copra markets collapsed in the late twentieth century. French Polynesia's pearl industry, centered on Tuamotu atolls but deeply tied to Marquesan identity, was formalized through a series of regional cultivation agreements in the 1970s and 1980s that transformed lagoon aquaculture into the territory's largest export earner. Issuing a denomination named directly for the commodity reflects how thoroughly pearl farming restructured the archipelago's economy.