On a central plinth at the back of the cabinet, standing about 1m tall is the Kiribati body armour. It comprises a square hip-length sleeveless tunic (cuirass) with a high curved top backboard and flat topped helmet. Lying at the base of the armour are a 60cm curved, wooden, sharks-teeth-edged club and two forearm guards each comprising four short straight wooden rods with a central row of sharks teeth backed and joined together at intervals with coir. One end culminates in four plaited coir loops for the fingers while at the other end is a plaited coir cord to fasten around the elbow.
Set above the armour is the Meto navigation stick chart. Below the armour on the front of the plinth hangs a 1m-long real specimen of a sleek Wahoo fish.
To the left of the armour are two wooden models of single outrigger canoes with asymmetrical hulls, while to the right is a 1m long highly polished wooden model of a canoe featuring two woven patterned triangular sails fixed to its masts and two large dark paddles at rest across the hull. The gunwale is inlaid with a row of small squares of different woods.The hull has a strip of dark wood along its side decorated with a row of white triangles while the prow and stern are each painted with four parallel lines of white dots. Hanging beneath this model are the open jaw bones of a dusky shark.
Four cases, two on either side at the front of the cabinet, contain reef core samples from the 1897 Funafuti expedition (described in Audio description). Between these cases are the skeletons of two small crabs, a blue sea starfish, a tiny rock boaring urchin and a Caribbean hermit crab, all collected during the same expedition.