Les Îles Leygues or the Leygues Islands, occasionally called « les Îles Swain », are a group of small islands and islets that are part 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 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 ...

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 ...

, a French territory in the 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 ...

. They were named after Georges Leygues (1857-1933), a French politician and

Minister of Marine One of France's Secretaries of State under the Ancien Régime was entrusted with control of the French Navy ( Secretary of State of the Navy (France).) In 1791, this title was changed to Minister of the Navy. Before January 1893, this position als ...

. They are important as a breeding site 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 and fur seals.

Geography

The Îles Leygues lie across the Passe de la Résolution from

Île Howe Île Howe is one of the islands of the Kerguelen archipelago, situated to the north of Île Foch, just after Île MacMurdo. It is about 8 km in length. Apart from rabbits, it is free of introduced animals. Important Bird Area The island ...

, and north of the main Kerguelen island of Grande Terre. The two largest islands are Île de Castries and Île Dauphine. Île de Castries, the largest of them is 500 ha. Far to the north lie the ''Roches du Terror'' and to the east the ''Roches du Gallieni''

rocks In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's ...

. The landscape of the islands is mainly flat, though rising westwards to form coastal cliffs. Access from the sea is virtually impossible because of extensive banks of

giant kelp ''Macrocystis pyrifera'', commonly known as giant kelp or bladder kelp, is a species of kelp (large brown algae), and one of four species in the genus ''Macrocystis''. Despite its appearance, it is not a plant; it is a heterokont. Giant kelp is ...

surrounding the group.

Ecology

Humans have never set foot on the islands. A large 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 occurs which has probably never been hunted and which has enabled the recolonisation of other sites from which the species was formerly exterminated.BirdLife International. (2012). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Îles Leygues. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2012-01-20.

Important Bird Area

The islands have been identified as a 24 km² Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International. Five or six 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 breed there as well as unknown numbers 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 and

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. Other

petrel Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the bird order Procellariiformes. Description The common name does not indicate relationship beyond that point, as "petrels" occur in three of the four families within that group (all except the albatross f ...

s may also nest on the islands but data are lacking because the only available information is from offshore observations.

References

Leygues Important Bird Areas of Kerguelen {{FrenchSouthernTerritories-geo-stub