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Concept
Juan de Nova Island
Summary
Juan de Nova Island (Île Juan de Nova, il ʒɥɑ̃ də nɔva), Malagasy: Nosy Kely) is a French-controlled tropical island in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, about one-third of the way between Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a low, flat island, in size.
Anchorage is possible off the northeast of the island which also has a airstrip. Administratively, the island is one of the Scattered islands in the Indian Ocean, a district of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands.
The island is garrisoned by French troops from Réunion and has a weather station.
Juan de Nova, about long and at its widest, is a nature reserve surrounded by reefs which enclose an area—not a true lagoon like in an atoll—of roughly . Forests, mainly of Casuarinaceae, cover about half the island. Sea turtles nest on the beaches around the island.
Juan de Nova is located in the Mozambique Canal, closer to the Madagascar side: from Tambohorano, west-southwest from fr and from the African coast.
The island was created when an underwater promontory of a coral reef emerged when the reef was dismantled by ocean currents, producing a sandy island. The prevailing south-southwest winds form dunes on the island, which, at tall, form the island's highest points.
Its southwest coast is bordered by a coral reef that prevents ships from landing, and the northeast coast consists of a lagoon that becomes sandy and impassable at low tide. There is a single pass that allows access to the island.
The difficult conditions for accessing the island has caused several shipwrecks, some of which remain on the Island, including that of the Tottenham (nicknamed the Charbonnier), which ran aground in 1911 on the island's southwest coast.
The island is about long from east to west, and wide, with an area of approximately 4.8 km2 (1.9 sq mi). The entire quasi-atoll is in circumference, with an exclusive economic zone of 61,050 km2 (23,572 sq mi).
João da Nova, a Galician admiral in the service of Portugal, came across the uninhabited island in 1501 while he was crossing the Mozambique Channel during an expedition to India.
Official source
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