Aldabra
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Interesting facts
- The atoll is made up of some 46 islands, and its highest point is an unnamed sand dune only about 16 metres above the sea.
- In 1842 alone two ships carried off around 1,200 giant tortoises from Aldabra, a measure of how quickly the population was stripped.
- Tides pour through the lagoon channels so fast that currents at the main passage exceed three metres per second.
- Adwaita, an Aldabra giant tortoise kept at Kolkata's Alipore Zoo, died in 2006 at an estimated age of around 250 years.
- Around 273 species of flowering plants and ferns grow on the atoll, along with roughly a thousand insect species and three endemic bats.
- Goats introduced to Aldabra were finally eradicated in 2012 after a long programme, and the flightless rail was reintroduced to Picard Island.
- The great and lesser frigatebird colonies on Aldabra are the second-largest breeding populations of these seabirds anywhere in the world.
- The Royal Society bought the lease of the atoll in 1970 to secure it for science after the military airbase plan was dropped.
- The 2016 El Niño heatwave cut hard coral cover on Aldabra's seaward reefs by more than half and wiped out over 90 percent of its soft corals.
- At least 13 species of whales and dolphins have been recorded in the waters around the atoll.
Why it is worth it
Aldabra is one of the great natural wonders of the Indian Ocean: a ring of low coral islands around a vast, shallow lagoon, far out in the south-western corner of the Seychelles. It is the second-largest coral atoll on Earth after Kiritimati and the largest raised coral reef, about 34 km long and 13 km wide. Its lagoon covers nearly 200 square kilometres and empties by some two-thirds at low tide, when the sea rushes out through deep channels between the islands. Four larger islands, Grande Terre, Malabar, Picard and Polymnie, form the rim, their surface a jagged, pitted limestone known locally as champignon, fringed by mangroves.
It is best known as the kingdom of the giant tortoise. Around 100,000 Aldabra giant tortoises live on the atoll, the largest population in the world, some weighing up to 350 kg. Their survival is a near miracle: in the 19th century ships carried them off by the hundred for food, and by 1900 they were close to extinction. A ban on killing them, imposed in 1891 by the concession-holder James Spurs, and later full legal protection allowed the population to recover. The atoll is also home to the world's largest land arthropod, the coconut crab, and to the white-throated rail, the last flightless bird of the Indian Ocean. Great and lesser frigatebirds breed here in huge numbers, alongside boobies and tropicbirds, and green turtles nest on the beaches.
Aldabra came close to becoming a military airbase. In the 1960s Britain planned an RAF station on the atoll, and it was an international protest by scientists, the "Aldabra Affair", that stopped the project; the base went to Diego Garcia instead. The Royal Society then ran a research station here, and since 1979 the atoll has been managed by the Seychelles Islands Foundation. It became a Special Nature Reserve in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982. A small research station on Picard Island is its only settlement; no airstrip or jetty has ever been allowed.
Getting there
Aldabra lies about 1,120 km south-west of Victoria on Mahé, home to Seychelles International Airport (SEZ). There are no airstrips on the atoll itself; the nearest airfield is on Assumption Island, about 50 km to the south-east. Visits are made only by expedition cruises and dive boats, with prior permission; landings on the atoll are guided.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Aldabra, the world's second-largest coral atoll, is located east of the continent of Africa. It is part of the Aldabra Group of islands in the Indian Ocean that are part of the Outer Islands of the Seychelles, with a distance of 1,120 km (700 mi) southwest of the capital, Victoria on Mahé Island.
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