St. Pierre Island
| Nickname: Île St. Pierre | |
|---|---|
 St. Pierre Island
|
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| Geography | |
| Location | Indian Ocean |
| Coordinates | 09°17′S 50°44′E / 9.283°S 50.733°ECoordinates: 09°17′S 50°44′E / 9.283°S 50.733°E |
| Archipelago | Seychelles |
| Adjacent bodies of water | Indian Ocean |
| Total islands | 1 |
| Major islands |
|
| Area | 1.64 km2 (0.63 sq mi) |
| Length | 1.3 km (0.81 mi) |
| Width | 1.55 km (0.963 mi) |
| Coastline | 4.6 km (2.86 mi) |
| Highest elevation | 16 m (52 ft) |
| Administration | |
| Group | Outer Islands |
| Sub-Group | Farquhar Group |
| Outer Islands District | |
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Largest settlement
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St. Pierre village
(population 0) |
| Demographics | |
| Demonym | Creole |
| Population | 0 (2014) |
| Pop. density | 0 /km2 (0 /sq mi) |
| Ethnic groups | Creole, French, East Africans, Indians. |
| Additional information | |
| Time zone | |
| Official website | www |
| ISO Code = SC-26 | |
St. Pierre Island is a raised reef island west of Providence Atoll and part of Farquhar Group, which belongs to the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. It has a distance of 736 km (457 mi) southwest of the capital, Victoria, on Mahé Island.
St. Pierre Island bears the name of one of Captain Dechemin's ships, who visited the island on 6 June 1732.
In former times, much of the island was covered with a Pisonia grandis forest, in which large numbers of seabirds nested. The coral rock was thus covered with guano. The guano, and since the 1950s also the rock and sand into which the phosphate had been leached, were mined away between 1906 and 1972 converting an island once densely forested to the current barren, pitted landscape. During that time, a small workers' settlement existed in the NW of St Pierre, which depended on supplies shipped in from abroad.
The island is located 34 km west of Cerf Island of Providence Atoll, and 462 km east of Aldabra. This uninhabited island is nearly circular, 1.6 km (0.99 mi) east-west by 1.3 km (0.81 mi) north-south, with a land area of 1.64 square kilometres (0.63 square miles). St. Pierre has a gently sloping seabed on the exposed southeastern coast and a steep drop off on the northwest, where the fringing reef is all but absent.
The seaward faces of St. Pierre Island are abrupt and undercut fossil coral cliffs, 2.0 to 4.3 m (6.6–14.1 ft) high and broken at one point only by a 5 metres (16 ft) inlet to a cove with sandy bottom. Thus St Pierre Island is virtually inaccessible from the sea. In the center is a depression more or less of sea level. The ceaseless sea swell has undercut these faces; jets of water are thrown up in many places by each wave as it strikes blowholes worn out of the coral, depositing dunes of sand and coral debris up to 10 m (33 ft) inland. At the southeast shore of the island, the wearing-away has caused the formation of flat shelves, and the entire island is honeycombed by caverns washed out by the sea. Due to this, no source of fresh water exists on St Pierre.
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Wikipedia