Lac Marville is a

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') ...

in the Kerguelen islands, part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. Extending over approximately ,All measurements were made on
Google maps
' with
ACME planimeter
' and checked on
Géoportail
' and its own tools. it is the largest

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

in the

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

and one of the largest in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. Its

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

covers about .

Location

Lac Marville is located on Grande-Terre, the archipelago's main island, along the northeastern shore of the Courbet Peninsula, between Cape Sandwich to the south and Cape Digby to the north.Topographic descriptions based on the general reconnaissance map at the scale of 1: 200,000: It was patently known to

whaler A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Japa ...

s as early as the 19th century, for Captain Joseph J. Fuller in his memoirs described a large lake, at the back of the Royal Bay, the circumference of which was about 15 miles. However, no mention of the lake appeared on

charts A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tab ...

until the 1930s.

Toponymy

This great lake was first officially mentioned by Edgar Aubert de la Rüe when he reported on his expeditions to Kerguelen in 1928-1929 and 1931. He chose the name of Marville without publishing the reasons.

Hydrology

Lac Marville is shallow and the surface of the water body is approximately above sea level. Its area of is quite similar to that of

Loch Morar Loch Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Mòrair) is a freshwater loch in Lochaber, Highland, Scotland. It is the fifth-largest loch by surface area in Scotland, at , and the deepest freshwater body in the British Isles with a maximum depth of . The l ...

(Scotland). It is the largest lake in the Kerguelen islands, far ahead of lakes Bontemps or d'Entr'Aigues whose surface areas are about . It is a coastal lake, actually a former lagoon separated from the

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 ...

by a spit, long and to wide. Lac Marville is about as long as it is wide ; it thus differs from most of the great lakes of the Kerguelen which have an elongated shape, constrained by the steep-sided morphology of the valleys. Seven

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanen ...

s dot the lake. The largest hardly exceeds . Even before the lake was mapped,

navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...

s (especially those of the ''Challenger'' expedition in 1874), had pointed out at the northern entrance of the outlet a remarkable green hillock, the "Morne Vert". Lac Marville is mainly fed by the Rivière de l'Est which originates at the foot of Mont Courbet and Delta Peak in the western mountains of the Courbet peninsula. At the mouth with the lake, downstream, the

river bed A stream bed or streambed is the bottom of a stream or river (bathymetry) or the physical confine of the normal water flow ( channel). The lateral confines or channel margins are known as the stream banks or river banks, during all but flood ...

widens to reach more than . Many waterflows complete this contribution, descending from the Azorella's hills or from the Hautes Mares to the north and from Mount Peeper to the south. The lake's watershed, the largest in the Kerguelen archipelago on par with that of the system formed by the Clarée and the Rivière des Galets, covers an area of . A short outlet flows into the ocean across the coastline along the back beach towards the south. Freshwater contains of dissolved salts with a high proportion of

chloride The chloride ion is the anion (negatively charged ion) Cl−. It is formed when the element chlorine (a halogen) gains an electron or when a compound such as hydrogen chloride is dissolved in water or other polar solvents. Chloride sa ...

s due to marine influence.

Ecology

Like the whole of the eastern plain of the Courbet peninsula, many

peat bogs A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg ...

occupy the edges of the lake. No native fish live in the lakes and rivers of the Kerguelen. At the end of the 1950s,

salmonids Salmonidae is a family of ray-finned fish that constitutes the only currently extant family in the order Salmoniformes . It includes salmon (both Atlantic and Pacific species), trout (both ocean-going and landlocked), chars, freshwater whit ...

were deliberately introduced in the archipelago. Brown trout (Salmo trutta), in particular those released into the Rivière du Château, colonized the entire drainage system of the peninsula thanks to their marine migratory form. Their arrival in Lac Marville occurred between 1982 and 1992. A green freshwater algae species belonging to the genus ''

Pediastrum ''Pediastrum'' is a genus of green algae, in the family Hydrodictyaceae. It is a photoautotrophic, nonmotile coenobial (fixed number of cells) green algae that inhabits freshwater environments. Morphology ''Pediastrum'' is a genus usually lo ...

'', (''Pediastrum marvillense''), was first described in Lac Marville.

Geology

The formation of the lake seems linked to the closure of a former marine gulf. The bottom is made up of fine quaternary deposits, clayey-sandy, of fluvio-glacial origin.

References

{{reflist Landforms of the Kerguelen Islands Marville