page_title: French Southern and Antarctic Lands
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: French Southern and Antarctic Lands / Geography
caption_attribution_description: Kerguelen cabbages on Mayes island (Kerguelen)
context_page_description: The French Southern and Antarctic Lands is an Overseas Territory of France. It consists of:
  Adélie Land, the French claim on the continent of Antarctica.
  Crozet Islands, a group in the southern Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar.
  Kerguelen Islands, a group of volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean, southeast of Africa, approximately equidistant between Africa, Antarctica and Australia.
  Saint Paul and Amsterdam Islands, a group to the north of the Kerguelen Islands.
  The Scattered Islands, a dispersed group of islands around the coast of Madagascar.
  The territory is sometimes referred to as the French Southern Lands or the French Southern Territories, usually to emphasize non-recognition of French sovereignty over Adélie Land as part of the Antarctic Treaty System.
  Approximately 150 to 310 persons live in the French Southern and Antarctic Lands but they are only military personnel, officials, scientific researchers and support staff. The territory has legally no permanent civilian population.
  On July 5, 2019, the French Austral Lands and Seas were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
context_section_description: The territory includes Amsterdam Island, Saint Paul Island, the Crozet Islands, and the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean near 43°S, 67°E, along with Adélie Land, the sector of Antarctica claimed by France, named by the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville after his wife.
  Adélie Land (about 432,000 km² or 167,000 sq mi) and the islands, totaling 7,781 km² (3,004 sq mi), have no indigenous inhabitants, though in 1997 there were about 100 researchers whose numbers varied from winter (July) to summer (January).
  Amsterdam Island and Saint Paul Island are extinct volcanoes and have been delineated as the Amsterdam and Saint-Paul Islands temperate grasslands ecoregion. The highest point in the territory is Mont Ross on Kerguelen Island at 1,850 m (6,070 ft). There are very few airstrips on the islands, only existing on islands with weather stations, and the 1,232 km (766 mi) of coastline have no ports or harbors, only offshore anchorages.
  The islands in the Indian Ocean are supplied by the special ship Marion Dufresne sailing out of Le Port in Réunion Island. Terre Adélie is supplied by L'Astrolabe sailing out of Hobart in Tasmania.
  However, the territory has a merchant marine fleet totaling (in 1999) 2,892,911 GRT/5,165,713 tonnes deadweight (DWT), including seven bulk carriers, five cargo ships, ten chemical tankers, nine container ships, six liquefied gas carriers, 24 petroleum tankers, one refrigerated cargo ship, and ten roll-on-roll-off (RORO) carriers. This fleet is maintained as a subset of the French register that allows French-owned ships to operate under more liberal taxation and manning regulations than permissible under the main French register. This register, however, is to vanish, replaced by the International French Register (Registre International Français, RIF).
caption: Kerguelen cabbages on Mayes Island, Kerguelen
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