The Courbet Peninsula (french: Péninsule Courbet) is a peninsula in northeastern Grande Terre Island, the main island of the
subantarctic
The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...
Kerguelen Archipelago
The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large ...
, Southern
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...
. In the south of the peninsula is
Port-aux-Français
Port-aux-Français is the main settlement of the Kerguelen Islands, and French Southern and Antarctic Lands, in the south Indian Ocean.
Occupancy
The settlement is located on the shore of the Gulf of Morbihan. About 45 residents spend the wi ...
, the principal station of the archipelago.
Geography
On the south coast of the peninsula is the
French research station
Research stations are facilities where scientific investigation, collection, analysis and experimentation occurs. A research station is a facility that is built for the purpose of conducting scientific research. There are also many types of resea ...
of
Port-aux-Français
Port-aux-Français is the main settlement of the Kerguelen Islands, and French Southern and Antarctic Lands, in the south Indian Ocean.
Occupancy
The settlement is located on the shore of the Gulf of Morbihan. About 45 residents spend the wi ...
, the only permanent settlement in the archipelago. Molloy, 10 km to the west of Port-aux-Francais along the north shore of the Gulf of Morbihan, is the site of a former observatory, established on 7 September 1874, by an American expedition led by G. P. Ryan, to observe the 1874
Transit of Venus
frameless, upright=0.5
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a tr ...
.
The Courbet Peninsula occupies the northeastern portion of the main island. The eastern portion of the peninsula is relatively flat, with the surface composed mainly of
alluvial
Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. All ...
deposits of
glacial
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betwe ...
origin, and altitudes not exceeding 200 m. However, the western part is hillier and reaches 900 m at
Mont Crozier near the
isthmus
An isthmus (; ; ) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus ...
.
The hills and the slopes of Mont Crozier are
olivine basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of a ...
with thicknesses up to 1000 m. Some 55 km long, the peninsula is about 10 km wide at its western base and widens to more than 30 km across further east. The
Golfe des Baleiniers is on the northern and northwestern shore of the peninsula and includes smaller
Hillsborough Bay ''(Baie du Hillsborough)'' and
Accessible Bay on the northern coast further to the east. The southern coast forms the northern limit of the
Gulf of Morbihan
The Gulf of Morbihan is a natural harbour on the coast of the department of Morbihan in southern Brittany, France. Its English name is taken from the French version, ''le golfe du Morbihan'', though it would be more precisely called 'the Mo ...
. At its south-eastern end is the small
Prince of Wales Peninsula which encloses small
Norwegian Bay
Norwegian Bay (french: Baie Norvégienne) is an Arctic Ocean waterway in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. Amund Ringnes Island is to the northwest (separated by the Hendriksen Strait from Cornwall Island), and Axel Heiberg Island i ...
(''Baie Norvégienne''). The easternmost point of the peninsula, and of Grande Terre, is Cape Ratmanoff, north of which is coastal Lake Marly. Further north still is Cape Digby, marking the north-eastern end of the peninsula. The northernmost point of the peninsula is Cape Cotter. The peninsula contains many lakes with boggy margins, the largest of which is
Lake Marville, a coastal lake located at the eastern end. Even so, much of the inland area is quite arid and mostly bare, without vegetation.
Environment
The Courbet Peninsula holds the largest breeding population of
southern elephant seal
The southern elephant seal (''Mirounga leonina'') is one of two species of elephant seals. It is the largest member of the clade Pinnipedia and the order Carnivora, as well as the largest extant marine mammal that is not a cetacean. It gets its ...
s in the archipelago, with 43,782 females recorded in 1997. The peninsula also holds a breeding colony of
Antarctic fur seal
The Antarctic fur seal (''Arctocephalus gazella''), is one of eight seals in the genus ''Arctocephalus'', and one of nine fur seals in the subfamily Arctocephalinae. Despite what its name suggests, the Antarctic fur seal is mostly distributed i ...
s.
Important Bird Area
Much of the peninsula has been identified by
BirdLife International as a 600 km
2 Important Bird Area (IBA) because of its value as a breeding site, especially for
seabird
Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...
s, with at least twenty-two species nesting there. Three large
colonies
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
of
king penguin
The king penguin (''Aptenodytes patagonicus'') is the second largest species of penguin, smaller, but somewhat similar in appearance to the emperor penguin. There are two subspecies: ''A. p. patagonicus'' and ''A. p. halli''; ''patagonicus'' ...
s are found on the north-western coast, with a combined total of 172,400 pairs. There are several
macaroni penguin
The macaroni penguin (''Eudyptes chrysolophus'') is a species of penguin found from the Subantarctic to the Antarctic Peninsula. One of six species of crested penguin, it is very closely related to the royal penguin, and some authorities consid ...
colonies along the northern coast. The inland parts of the peninsula are important for holding the largest population of
Eaton's pintails. There are some 300 pairs of
wandering albatross
The wandering albatross, snowy albatross, white-winged albatross or goonie (''Diomedea exulans'') is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae, which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. It was the last species of albatross to be desc ...
es and up to 800 pairs of
northern giant petrel
The northern giant petrel (''Macronectes halli''), also known as Hall's giant petrel, is a large predatory seabird of the southern oceans. Its distribution overlaps broadly, but is slightly north of, the similar southern giant petrel (''Macrone ...
s.
There are also large numbers of breeding
gentoo penguin
The gentoo penguin ( ) (''Pygoscelis papua'') is a penguin species (or possibly a species complex) in the genus ''Pygoscelis'', most closely related to the Adélie penguin (''P. adeliae'') and the chinstrap penguin (''P. antarcticus''). The ea ...
s,
Kerguelen shag
The Kerguelen shag (''Leucocarbo verrucosus'') is a species of cormorant endemic to the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, one of the most isolated places on Earth. Many authorities consider it a subspecies of the imperial shag.
R ...
s,
black-faced sheathbill
The black-faced sheathbill (''Chionis minor''), also known as the lesser sheathbill or paddy bird, is one of only two species of sheathbills, aberrant shorebirds which are terrestrial scavengers of subantarctic islands.
Description
They are du ...
s,
brown skua
The brown skua (''Stercorarius antarcticus''), also known as the Antarctic skua, subantarctic skua, southern great skua, southern skua, or hākoakoa (Māori), is a large seabird that breeds in the subantarctic and Antarctic zones and moves furthe ...
s,
Kerguelen
The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large ...
and
Antarctic tern
The Antarctic tern (''Sterna vittata'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. It ranges throughout the southern oceans and is found on small islands around Antarctica as well as on the shores of the mainland. Its diet consists primarily of small fis ...
s, and
kelp gull
The kelp gull (''Larus dominicanus''), also known as the Dominican gull, is a gull that breeds on coasts and islands through much of the Southern Hemisphere. The nominate ''L. d. dominicanus'' is the subspecies found around South America, part ...
s.
One of the threats to the bird populations on the peninsula, particularly the petrels, are the feral cats.
Notes and references
{{Important Bird Areas of French Southern Territories
Landforms of the Kerguelen Islands
Important Bird Areas of Kerguelen
Subantarctic peninsulas
Peninsulas of France