Drawing on fieldwork in Kiribati and the Cook Islands, this chapter shows how atoll islands and tropical lagoons, considered highly vulnerable to present and future sea level rise, are extraordinary malleable socio-natural worlds. Revolving around sacred islands submerged by sea water, ancient fish traps, whales, coastal protection devices, and scientific findings of sand sedimentation processes and sea level rise, we demonstrate how the island worlds are constantly made and remade by social and natural forces, and somewhat surprisingly, how the rising sea is conspicuously absent at many island shores in the Pacific.