An unusual, all-female assembly of great hammerhead sharks has been gathering in the tropical waters of French Polynesia every summer for over a decade, with numbers peaking around the full moon, scientists have discovered.
These critically endangered sharks convene during the austral summer, between December and March, around openings in two neighboring atolls — Rangiroa and Tikehau — in the Tuamotu archipelago. An atoll is a ring-shaped island or coral reef enclosing a lagoon that forms when land erodes and sinks below the ocean surface.
