Voh
a beating heart

When the colonists came from the city to create the village, they set up a great many arabica coffee plantations. Until a cyclone destroyed the coffee plants, which were then definitively vanquished by a devastating drought. From this bygone age the coffee ecomuseum survives, nested in one of the village’s beautiful colonial houses.

From coffee to shrimp farming

Since then, the principally agricultural vocation of the commune has continued, but it has largely turned towards breeding. Not long ago, Voh also got into fish farming, and more specifically into shrimp farming (whose scientific name is peneiculture). One of the Northern Province’s two aquaculture farms can be found on the Gatope peninsula. It has greatly contributed to the renown of the Caledonian blue shrimp, so loved by our distant Japanese neighbours.

Also at the back of the Gatope beach, underneath the foliage, you can discover the last stone vestiges of a fort erected here in 1865, as a matter of fact the remains of a former powder keg. Not far from here, a commemorative plaque, attached to a white obelisk, is a reminder of the 1865 massacre of the crews of two ships by the Kanak inhabitants.

Voh’s heart has not stopped beating...

But the heart of Voh, with or without the play on words, beats above all in the commune's mangroves. This is where the photographer and journalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand took a snap of a natural curiosity in the shape of a heart, which spread across the planet when he decided to make it the cover of his book Earth from Above, a work which has sold many millions of copies. As such, the Heart of Voh has become the world symbol of a planet which must be preserved.

When the colonists came from the city to create the village, they set up a great many arabica coffee plantations. Until a cyclone destroyed the coffee plants, which were then definitively vanquished by a devastating drought. From this bygone age the coffee ecomuseum survives, nested in one of the village’s beautiful colonial houses.

From coffee to shrimp farming

Since then, the principally agricultural vocation of the commune has continued, but it has largely turned towards breeding. Not long ago, Voh also got into fish farming, and more specifically into shrimp farming (whose scientific name is peneiculture). One of the Northern Province’s two aquaculture farms can be found on the Gatope peninsula. It has greatly contributed to the renown of the Caledonian blue shrimp, so loved by our distant Japanese neighbours.

Also at the back of the Gatope beach, underneath the foliage, you can discover the last stone vestiges of a fort erected here in 1865, as a matter of fact the remains of a former powder keg. Not far from here, a commemorative plaque, attached to a white obelisk, is a reminder of the 1865 massacre of the crews of two ships by the Kanak inhabitants.

Voh’s heart has not stopped beating...

But the heart of Voh, with or without the play on words, beats above all in the commune's mangroves. This is where the photographer and journalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand took a snap of a natural curiosity in the shape of a heart, which spread across the planet when he decided to make it the cover of his book Earth from Above, a work which has sold many millions of copies. As such, the Heart of Voh has become the world symbol of a planet which must be preserved.