Swimming with stingrays

The Marquesas Islands differ from the other islands of French Polynesia: they lack a protective, encircling coral reef. They rise from the sea so sharply that legend says the god Maui pulled the islands straight up from the deep and, here on the island of Nukuhiva, the first humans were transformed from rocks by the god Tokohiti. Both humans and wildlife have proliferated, sometimes together, like these Cousteau divers and these stingrays of the family Dasyatidae