L'île du Sud (South Island, l'île Boisées) is an island located in the Cargados Carajos shoals, a group of outer islands of Mauritius, one of thirteen islands of

St. Brandon 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 ...

, 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 and catch-and-release 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 The Privy Council (PC), officially His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the sovereign of the United Kingdom. Its membership mainly comprises senior politicians who are current or former members of e ...

. L'île du Sud is one of the constituent entity islands of the Cargados Carajos coral reef atoll system which is itself a designated Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

in the Southwest Indian Ocean. 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 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 Since 1656, at least 300 tropical cyclones have affected the Mascarene Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. The archipelago consists of several islands, including Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues. Mauritius claims responsibility for sever ...

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 (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 Île Raphael within the Madagascar Hotspot in the Indian Ocean. (called after Mme. Veuve Raphaël -1820s ) is an island in the Cargados Carajos shoals ( Saint Brandon), a group of thirty outer islands of Mauritius. Île Raphael is the operati ...

) used by Raphael Fishing Company for hand line fishing on the atoll using small pirogues and for

fly fishing Fly fishing is an angling method that uses a light-weight lure—called an artificial fly—to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. The light weight requires casting techniques significantly diffe ...

activities, for wading and sight casting for Bonefish, tailing Indo-Pacific Permit and other species. Raphael Fishing Company is the only provider of accommodation on the Cargados Carajos 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 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 and the Arabian Sea
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