Moorea - Research Facilities

Research Facilities

The University of California, Berkeley maintains the Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station on the west coast of Cook's Bay. The Gump station is also home to the Moʻorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site (MCR LTER). The project, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is a partnership between the University of California Santa Barbara and California State University, Northridge that includes additional researchers from UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego and the University of Hawaiʻi. The Moʻorea Coral Reef LTER is part of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. The LTER Program was established by the NSF in 1980 to support research on long-term ecological phenomena. The Mo'orea Coral Reef LTER became the 26th site in the LTER network in September 2004.

The French EPHE (École pratique des hautes études) and now the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) maintain a research station at the end of ʻŌpūnohu Bay since about 1970. This Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement (Centre for island research and environment observatory) or CRIOBE is a research site for several international projects, including the monitoring of coral reefs throughout French Polynesia as well as the monitoring of the fish population on the Tīahurā transect of Moʻorea's reef for over 30 years.