Group of about 80 islands (pop., 1996: 14,283), French Polynesia .
The archipelago comprises 75 atolls, one raised coral atoll (Makatea), and innumerable coral reefs, roughly dispersed northwest-southeast as a double chain for over 900 miles (1,450 km). Europeans visited the islands in the 16th–17th centuries. France occupied them in 1844 and annexed them in 1880 as a Tahitian dependency. They now form, with the Gambier Islands , an administrative division of French Polynesia. In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl 's Kon-Tiki expedition ended on Raroia
one of Tuamotu's many reefs. France has used some uninhabited atolls in the archipelago for nuclear testing.