50 Poe rava Marquesas Islands

The poe rava — the black-lipped pearl oyster — underpins the Marquesas economy in a way that makes it an entirely logical subject for a circulating denomination. French Polynesia's pearl industry, centered on Tahiti and the Tuamotu atolls, became the territory's dominant export commodity in the 1990s after wild stock depletion forced the shift to lagoon aquaculture. The Marquesas sit at the northwestern edge of that industry's reach.

This 2015 issue is part of the Institut d'émission d'outre-mer series produced for French Polynesia, which operates its own coinage independently of metropolitan France despite the CFP franc's peg to the euro.