L'île du Sud (South Island, l'île Boisées) is an island located in the

Cargados Carajos It is highly likely that the name Saint Brandon was derived from the French sailors and corsairs that sailed to and from Britanny, after a town called Saint-Brandan. It has since been Anglicised to Saint Brandon and is also known as the Cargad ...

shoals, a group of outer islands of Mauritius, one of thirteen islands of St. Brandon, held under permanent lease since 1901 and under Permanent Grant since 2008 by the Raphael Fishing Company. L'île du Sud is currently one of two island headquarters of Raphael Fishing Company, a centenarian company, whose employees and fishermen carry out sustainable fishing through

Handline fishing Handline fishing, or handlining, is a fishing technique where a single fishing line is held in the hands, rather than with a fishing rod like the usual angling. It is a type of angling, and is not to be confused with handfishing, which is catch ...

and

catch-and-release Catch and release is a practice within recreational fishing where after capture, often a fast measurement and weighing of the fish is performed, followed by posed photography as proof of the catch, and then the fish are unhooked and returned ...

Sports Fishing. It was one of thirteen islands that made legal history when it was adjudged to be a Permanent Grant by the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. L'île du Sud is one of the constituent entity islands of the

coral reef atoll system which is itself a designated

Key Biodiversity Area The Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) approach helps to identify and designate areas of international importance in terms of biodiversity conservation using globally standardised criteria. KBAs extend the Important Bird Area (IBA) concept to other taxon ...

(KBA) an Important Bird Area in the Southwest

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 ...

. The island is closely skirted by busy Southeast Asian shipping lanes making its unique ecosystem extremely vulnerable to a variety of man-made (shipwrecks and oil spills) as well as natural disasters such as

tropical cyclones A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Dependi ...

which pose credible threats to its long-term existence as a key biodiversity area. Since 1950, there have been 249 human fatalities related to tropical cyclones in the Mascarene Islands.

Disease to flora and fauna/Invasive Alien Species (IAS)

Mauritius is attempting to move towards a comprehensive and coordinated approach to addressing IAS78 issues. To comply with international agreements (notably the

Convention on Biological Diversity The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is a multilateral treaty. The Convention has three main goals: the conservation of biological diversity (or biodiversity); the sustainable use of its ...

(CBD)) Mauritius established the National Invasive Alien Species Committee (NIASC) in August 2003. One of the priorities for the NIASC (composed of representatives from the agriculture, biodiversity conservation, health, environment and education sectors together the private sector) was to produce a National Invasive Alien Species Strategy for the Republic of Mauritius (NIASS). In the 2008-2017 National Invasive Alien Species Strategy (NIASS), the authors acknowledge that ‘Islands, where native species have evolved in relative isolation are particularly vulnerable to IAS’ and this is particularly apt for the St. Brandon isles such as L'île du Sud which is situated in a Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) but the Mauritius NIASS did not cover St. Brandon. The management of L'île du Sud, however, acts on Mauritius NIASS priorities based on the maxim that “prevention is better than cure”, in line with the CBD Guiding Principle 2.1-2.

List of Mauritius' wettest tropical cyclones

L'île du Sud, like the rest of the atoll, stands in the pathway of the many cyclones that originate close to the island ( List_of_historical_tropical_cyclone_names#South-West_Indian_Ocean) and then generally rotate towards the west and Madagascar. They dictate the yearly operations of the only fishing company resident on the Thirteen Islands of St Brandon.

Fishing activities

L'île du Sud is one of the two island bases (the other is Île Raphael) used by Raphael Fishing Company for hand line fishing on the atoll using small pirogues and for fly fishing activities, for wading and sight casting for

Bonefish The bonefish (''Albula vulpes'') is the type species of the bonefish family (Albulidae), the only family in order Albuliformes. History Bonefish were once believed to be a single species with a global distribution, however 9 different species ...

, tailing Indo-Pacific Permit and other species. Raphael Fishing Company is the only provider of accommodation on the

atoll together with the necessary infrastructure and services to handle up to forty fishermen at any one time on the island.

Shipwrecks

The thirteen low-lying islands of Raphael Fishing Company on the Saint Brandon reef are extremely vulnerable to environmentaland commercial damage because of the busy shipping lanes around them. On 1 February 2015, the fishing vessel, ''Kha Yang'', with of fuel in its tanks, ran aground on the reef off L'île du Sud. Twenty crew were rescued shortly after its grounding, and a salvage operation pumped the fuel from its tanks a few weeks later. The ongoing damage to one of the longest continuous algal ridges in the Indian Ocean is incalculable as the vessel is still () rusting into the lagoon. On 5 December 2022, the Taiwanese fishing vessel, 41 FV YU FENG 67, ran aground off L'île du Sud with of diesel and of heavy oil. In the absence of any other available solutions within the Archipelago, the Raphael Fishing Company was requested by the relevant ministries of the Mauritius Government to use its commercial fishing boats save the twenty crew on board which it did on the same day with its own vessel from Ile Raphael and from L'île du Sud. The commercial cost of these shipwrecks to Raphaël Fishing Company's livelihood in the short and the long term are yet to be scientifically and objectively assessed within the legal context of its

jouissance ''Jouissance'' is a French term meaning "enjoyment", which in Lacanianism is taken in terms both of rights and property, and of sexual orgasm. The latter has a meaning partially lacking in the English word "enjoyment". The term denotes a transgr ...

under the Permanent Grant.

Image gallery

Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 01.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 02.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 03.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 05.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 06.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 07.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 08.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 09.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 10.jpg, Image:Ile du Sud, St, Brandon, Cargados Carajos Islands - images of fauna and flora in 2019 11.jpg,

References

External links

Australian Bureau of Meteorology - Understanding tropical cyclone categories
Regional specialized meteorological centres
India Meteorological Department
nbsp;–

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line betwee ...

and the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel ...

Météo-France – La Reunion
nbsp;– South Indian Ocean from 30°E to 90°E Tropical cyclone warning centres
Australian Bureau of Meteorology
. – South Indian Ocean & South Pacific Ocean from 90°E to 160°E, south of 10°S {{Coord, 16, 48, 56, S, 59, 30, 09, E, display=title Islands of St. Brandon Outer Islands of Mauritius Reefs of the Indian Ocean Fishing areas of the Indian Ocean Important Bird Areas of Mauritius Atolls of the Indian Ocean Hazard scales Tropical cyclone meteorology Wind 2022 disasters in Africa 2022 in Mauritius 2022 in the environment December 2022 events in Africa Environment of Mauritius Oil spills Maritime incidents in 2022 Privy Council of the United Kingdom