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The islands of French Polynesia are scattered throughout a considerable oceanic area located on the eastern boundary of the Indo-Pacific Province. This area stretches from 134°28' W (Temoe Island) to 154°40' W longitude (Stilly Island), and from 7°50' S (Motu one Island) to 27°36' S latitude (Rapa Island). Out of the 118 islands constituting French Polynesia, 35 are high volcanic islands and 83 are low-relief islands or atolls. Altogether, the territory of French Polynesia represents an area of 4000 km2 of dry land, 12,000 km2 of lagoonal water and a huge Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covering 5,500,000 km2 of oceanic water (Gabrie and Salvat, 1985).

Fish communities in the lagoon of the Tikehau atoll were studied by only a few researchers. Harmelin-Vivien (1984) studied the distribution of the main herbivorous families (Scaridae and Acanthuridae) in the lagoon and on the outer slope to 30 m in depth. The total fish community of the outer slope was studied by Galzin (1985, 1987) at 12 m in depth. These studies were carried out in the southwestern part of the atoll. Spatial organization of coral associated fish community was studied throughout the lagoon by Morize et al. (1990). Most of the other studies undertaken at Tikehau involved the artisanal fishery (Morize, 1984, 1985 ; Caillart and Morize, 1986, 1988) and the biology of some target species to the exploited stock (Caillart et al., 1986; Caillart, 1988; Morize et Caillart, 1987). It seems worthwhile to present in this special issue of ARB, all the available information on the fish fauna of Tikehau. Furthermore, this overview allows us to compare our results with others in the Indopacific region.