Astove wall, Astove Island, Seychelles Archipelago, Southern Indian Ocean
By John Boyle on 22 February 2006
Though the main holiday islands of Seychelles and grouped together an easy hop from each other, this nation’s territory actually covers over a million and a quarter square miles of ocean, stretching almost to Madagascar in the south. Lost in this massive tract of sea are a handful of tiny coral islands, in the main uninhabited, and one of the most southerly of these is Astove.
While some people will have heard of legendary Aldabra, the world’s largest raised coral atoll with its population of over 150,000 giant tortoise, now a world heritage site, very few will know the name of its neighbour Astove – and even fewer will have visited this lonely spot.
Harsh Environment
About a mile from end to end Astove is little more than a harsh strip of land surrounding a shallow lagoon with just one channel leading to the sea. The only people to ever live on this lost dot in the ocean apart from shipwrecked sailors were a family who tried to make the island their paradise. It was an attempt that failed when the father’s acute toothache developed into an abcess which took his life, and his wife and family deserted the island, The crumbling remains of their hacienda style house now lies abandoned, taken back over by nature.
Off the western side of the island within a matter of yards from the sandy shore the water colour changes from light turquoise to the deepest blue, and the coral wall drops sheer to an ocean floor that within a short distance reaches depths of …
But this is no ordinary wall. It is indented with caves, overhangs, cracks in the coral and dark mysterious holes which hold many surprises. The bright clouds of orange antheas and other tiny fish darting among the luxuriant soft and hard corals along the shallow top of the wall give no clue to what lies below.
Untouched ocean
Because this is untouched ocean, as it must have been for millions of years. Huge potato cod and grouper live in the labrynth of the swiss cheese that is the wall, lurking deep in the dark recesses and coming out only to hunt. Peer into the shadowy openings and very often a huge primeaval creature is staring back at you. At over 60 metres down I came across a giant grouper. His body was half as long again than mine, but also easily well over a metre thick. His fins were ragged, the result of encounters with sea creatures even larger than himself, and his teeth sharp and pointed. He appeared almost prehistoric – an oceanic remainder of the days of the dinasour on land – more like a coelocanth that anything I have ever seen before. Though he was not threatening towards me, I realised that he could easily make a meal of me if he wanted to.
As I was filming him I was thinking that no-one would believe me when I said how big he was as there was nothing to compare him to so it was almost impossible to get any perspective of scale. Then a turtle swam by, and the grouper saw the chance of an easy snack; turning full circle while the panicked turtle banked sharply to try and escape, with a lazy bite the grouper went for the turtle. I heard the crunch of teeth on the back of the turtle’s hard shell and only the fact that it had been banked over on its side saved it as the grouper’s teeth failed to get a good grip and slipped off the turtle’s shell. With a burst of speed the turtle shot away into even deeper water, and with a lazy flick of the tail the grouper gave half hearted chase. Check the video clip – a unique encounter!
The night shift
Every morning the pristine white sands of the beach look like a construction site. What resemble digger tracks are everywhere, running straight up and down the beach from the ocean to above the high water mark, and there among the first scrub bushes are the signs of major excavations. And if you arrive early enough you will witness the night shift of turtles heaving their exhausted way back to the sea after digging their nests and laying their clutch of eggs. Astove is a major nesting ground for both green and hawksbill turtles. On the underwater ledges and sheltered under the overhangs, everywhere you will find sleeping turtle, either recovering from the night’s nesting activities, or waiting for the coming fall of night to answer the primaeval call to return to
the beach where they hatched to lay their own clutch of eggs.
So remote and unexploited are these waters that staring out into the blue you anticipate that anything can come in at any moment. We only spent two days there and because of the depths I was diving time in the water was limited. Yet even in so short a time, as well as countless grouper and turtle encounters I got a small taste of what might be lurking just out of sight in the deep limitless blue beyond. Hunting jack and tuna sweep into the wall in lightning forages for prey. Turning my camera onto a distant dot way off the wall, it grew in the viewfinder into a large hammerhead shark; it swam effortlessly straight towards me until it was just a metre away, clearly checking me out. On the same dive a huge manta cruised along parallel to the wall at around 15 metres depth. Not wanting to spook it in it’s approach I held my breath so my bubbles would not scare it. Gracefully it kept coming towards me, but the air in my lungs was pulling me towards the surface and at last to avoid an embolism, when it was only metres from me, I had to breathe out. Spooked, it performed a graceful upward somersault and headed back the way it had come.
Astove wall is a place of deep oceanic mystery and wonder, a place when encounters with creatures that seem to belong in the past rather than the present is an everyday occurrence.
Contact
Author: John Boyle
Email: info@travel-dive.com
Article Comments
Willy Volk says
The video clip is too short. All those colors look like Disney animated it! I love to dive sheer coral walls; this site must be amazing!