Island of the East

The island of the East belongs to the archipelago the sub-Antarctic islands Crozet, pertaining to the southern and antarctic Lands French.

With the island of the Possession located 18 km at the west, beyond the channel of the Orcs, it form the Eastern group of the archipelago.

With 140 km ², the island of the East is the second larger island of the archipelago. It culminates with the Mont Marion-Dufresne to 1.050 m of altitude, the culminating point of the Crozet islands.

Volcanology

The first volcanologic recognition of the island of the East was carried out in December 1975 and January 1976 by Jean Lameyre and Jacques Nougier.

The island of the East is the remainder of a powerful stratovolcano strongly eroded by the quaternary glaciers.

The center of the apparatus coincides with the center of the island. Its heart (area of the collar of the Gusts) is consisted brêches and dykes having undergone a light metamorphism (epidote) injected plutonic rocks of the gabbro-diorite type, set up 8,75 million years ago (Miocène). The whole constitutes phase 1.

Above and in discordance, thick levels of agglomerates rest on more than 1000 meters thickness (phases 2 and 3). These agglomerates are armed by a dense network with seams and dykes which constitute the jagged reliefs of the Mounts Duclesmeur and Lesquin. Phase 3 is completed there is approximately 1 million years (Pleistocene) by basaltic emissions of lava whose composition varies hawaiite with the océanite.

The final activity (phase 4) is characterized by Strombolian cones (in particular with the Marion Mount). It is evaluated with less than 200.000 years (certain apparatuses with less than 5.500 years) i.e. contemporary or posterior to the great glaciation of cap which covered the island with the East, like the east today the island Bouvet in the South Atlantic.

This glaciation benefitted from the network of faults and dykes, of the friable nature of the agglomerates to model abrupt and short valleys. The cliffs which protect the island from all shares, except with the outlets of the glaciated valleys, testify to an intense coastal erosion.

In glance with his recent volcanologic history, one can consider the island of the East potentially active, but with a least degree which the being can the Possession or the Pigs .

petrology of the island of the East is characterized by its single complex of plutonic rocks for the archipelago of Crozet. The series of lava chemically spread out océanites, ankaramites with feldspathic basalts and hawaiites, i.e. they correspond to the fractionation of alkaline lava resulting from a differentiation partial and under low pressure of the oceanic coat.

See : Diagrammatic geological map of the island of the East and volcanologic data in Volcanoes off the Antarctic Punt and Southern Oceans by J. Nougier and J.W. Thomson, Edict. W.E.LeMasurier and J.W. Thomson, Res. Antarctic Series, Flight 48, American Geophysical Union (1990).

History

the island of the East was discovered on January 24th 1772 by the French explorer Nicolas Thomas Marion-Dufresne. It was then named island Aride , then island Chabrol in 1825.

The island of the East knew the hunters of seals from the United Kingdom, from England News (engraved stone Henry Kennedy dec.21, 1806) and from France. Most known of all is Guillaume Lesquin which, at 22 years, fact shipwreck on July 29th, 1825, with the crew reduced to 6 other people of the Adventure (the remainder of the crew having been left in the island with the Pigs) on the beach it named well Shipwreck, on the septentrional coast of the island. Saved on January 6th, 1827 by the British ship Cape Pucket , Guillaume Lesquin will be of return in France on May 7th, 1827 when he will entrust in July to the sheets of the Armorican Lycée the memories of his odyssey.

The integrality of this account was published in 1998 by the Editions of Dyle (Amapof author) under the title Three shipwrecks for three islands pp.29-81 with chart and illustrations, presentation of J. Nougier. ISBN: 90-801124-9-6.

The island of the East is uninhabited.

Fauna and flora

It is one of the only southern islands not having been contaminated by the rats, rabbits or other cats, it thus has a single richness of fauna. It must be preserved.

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