The first hint you’re about to step into a world almost prehistoric in its untouched nature is the welcome party the motu – colloquially named Bird Island – sends out to greet you on your approach. Hovering at eye level, a curious red footed booby guides you and your boat into the shallows, hanging on a current of warm air that will take it back to its patiently waiting young.

The sky over Motu Tahuna is, all at once, alive with a cacophony of as many as 15 species of birds to which Tetiaroa – this French Polynesian atoll – has become home.

This ornithological haven is a song of hundreds of them: red footed, masked, and brown boobies; white common terns; and great frigate birds, just a few of those now dancing on the breeze and – knowingly or not – taking their vital position in the beautiful cycle that makes Tetiaroa what it is and has been for centuries.

The French Polynesians call it ‘mana’ – a reciprocity or a shared connectedness that emboldens the individual and the collective community. From a cultural perspective, it’s the foundation of a spirituality that connects sacred energy from the ocean and the earth to the Polynesian people who, through the Maraes (the remains of ancient religious temples dotted across the 12 islets) is channelled back to the ocean and life within it.

From a scientific perspective, it’s the vital role that Tetiaroa’s seafaring birds play by doing nothing other than what comes naturally to them: producing guano.

“‘Mana’ is a very good way to describe it,” says our guide, Michael, a member of the Tetiaroa Society and the young researcher under whose supervision we are allowed to accompany his field work on Motu Tahuna. “The birds take their nourishment from the ocean, they return to the island, produce their guano which runs off the land, fertilising both the soil and the sea; nourishing and replenishing the life in it.”