Vanuatu

Vanuatu is an archipelago of some eighty islands of volcanic origin lined up over a highly active subduction zone, with several volcanoes in permanent eruption, among them Yasur, one of the most accessible in the world. Its islands are covered in tropical rainforest and fringed by coral reefs and seagrass meadows where dugongs graze. Volcanic activity is not merely a geological spectacle: it shapes the ecology of the islands, fertilises the soils and supplies heat to the ground. The land fauna is of Melanesian origin, with fruit bats, fruit doves, megapodes and the coconut crab, the largest land arthropod on the planet, able to open coconuts with its claws and to climb palm trees.