French Southern and Antarctic Lands

Location
Flag
Quick Facts
Capital	Port-aux-Français, Kerguelen (administered from Saint-Pierre, Reunion)
Government	Overseas territory of France
Currency	Euro (EUR)
Area	439,781 km2 (7781 km2, excluding Adelie land)
Population	No permanent habitation - up to 145 researchers
Language	French
Internet TLD	.tf
Time Zone	UTC +5

French Southern and Antarctic Lands (French: Terres australes et antarctiques françaises, or TAAF; [1]) are a group of islands of the Southern Ocean, about equidistant between Africa, Antarctica, and Australia along with a narrow strip of Antarctica, known as Adelie land.

Regions

• Kerguelen (Archipel des Kerguelen), a group of volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean, southeast of Africa, approximately equidistant between Africa, Antarctica and Australia;
• St. Paul and Amsterdam islands (Îles Saint Paul et Amsterdam), a group to the north of Kerguelen;
• Crozet Islands (Îles Crozet), a group in the southern Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar;
• Adélie Land (Terre Adélie), the French claim on the Antarctica continent;
• the Scattered Islands of the Indian Ocean (Îles Éparses), a dispersed group of islands around the coast of Madagascar.

Understand

The Southern Lands consist of two near-polar archipelagos, Iles Crozet and Iles Kerguelen, and two volcanic islands, Ile Amsterdam and Ile Saint-Paul. They have no permanent inhabitants and are visited only by researchers studying the native fauna. The "Antarctic Lands" portion consists of Adelie Land, a thin slice of the Antarctic continent discovered and claimed by the French in 1840, and set aside by the Antarctic Treaty.

Get in

By plane

There are no airports in these islands.

By boat

Port-aux-Français, Kerguelen.

There are no harbors in these islands. The Marion Dufresne, an oceanographic ship, travels four times a year from Reunion to these isles.

Buy

Economic activity is limited to servicing meteorological and geophysical research stations and French and other fishing fleets. The fish catches landed on Iles Kerguelen by foreign ships are exported to France and Reunion.

Sleep

There is no public accommodation in these islands.

Stay safe

Ile Amsterdam and Ile Saint-Paul are extinct volcanoes.

Stay healthy

All of these islands have harsh environments, especially in the austral winter. A small hospital exists in Port-aux-Francaises, Kerguelen.

This article contains content from Wikipedia's French Southern and Antarctic Lands article. View that page's revision history for the list of authors.