Day 11 — February 12
Astove Island  The seas were calm and glassy as we approached Astove this morning. The scuba divers went out immediately after breakfast, followed soon after by the main group making a wet landing on the uninhabited atoll. Crossing over the vertical drop-off in Zodiacs, we made lots of exclamations — oohs and ahs inspired by the gin-clear waters and brilliant reef fishes visible from the boats.
Astove is the site of an old copra plantation that operated in the 1960s and ‘70s. Copra is the dried “meat” of coconuts, and much of the island’s native vegetation was cleared to make way for groves of coconut trees. The houses, drying sheds, and other buildings from the operation still stand in various states of disrepair. Following the sudden death of the proprietor, an Englishman named Mark Veevers-Carter, the enterprise struggled on into the 1980s before it was abandoned.
While ashore, a few of us ventured across the narrow island to visit the inner lagoon. Others took off cross-country to find the decaying ruins of Veevers-Carter’s house. Still others took a walk along the beach to investigate the tracks of green turtles that had come ashore to lay eggs. The beach walkers had not gone far when they came across very fresh tracks leading up off the beach and into the vegetation.
For the snorkelers, Astove was unquestionably one of the highlights of the trip. Jack Grove expounded on the pristine nature of this reef habitat during the several hours that we were in the water. The number of species, the brilliance of the colors, and the sheer vibrancy of the living reef were awe-inspiring. Turtles, sharks, yellowtail fusiliers, oriental sweetlips, Napoleon wrasses, and giant potato groupers abounded everywhere. For diversity of species, Astove is tops.
Whereas Aldabra was a bastion of endemism, replete with coveted and localized Indian Ocean species such as the Aldabra flightless rail ( Dryolimnas aldabranus ), Madagascar (Aldabra) sacred ibis ( Threskionis abbotti ), and Aldabra drongo ( Dicrurus aldabranus ), for the birders Astove’s central lagoon acted as a magnet of sorts for legions of migratory, mostly Paleoarctic shorebirds. These transhemispheric migrants somehow know of this dot of land surrounded by clear blue water. The strange sight of these arctic emissaries feeding peacefully under the hot tropical sun within sight of mangroves and giant tortoises stirred the imagination.
Present were shorebirds such as black-bellied plovers ( Pluvialis squataroli ), bar-tailed godwits ( Limosa lapponica ), whimbrels ( Numenius phaeopus ), common greenshanks ( Tringa nebularia ), ruddy turnstones ( Arenaria interpres ), sanderlings ( Calidris alba ), and curlew sandpipers ( Calidris ferruginea ), each feeding in different water depths and employing a slightly different feeding strategy to avoid direct competition with one another. Complementing the shorebirds were Caspian ( Sterna caspia ) and great crested terns ( Thalasseus bergii ), in addition to both light and dark morph dimorphic egrets ( Egretta dimorpha ).
The walk to the central lagoon took only 15 minutes to complete, allowing a peek into Astove’s vegetated interior where the nearly constant snaplike vocalizations of indigenous Madagascar cisticolas ( Cisticola cherina ) blended with the melodic songs of glittery Abbott’s sunbirds ( Nectarinia abbotti ), the latter endemic to Astove, Cosmoledo, and Assumption and thus one of the world’s most limited-range sunbirds.
The following passage from Birds of the Seychelles by Skerrett, Bullock, and Disley added an ironic perspective, giving pause to ponder the latter sighting: “Despite the almost total destruction of Assumption during the period of human exploitation, particularly when the island was stripped of vegetation to permit the mining of guano, the species (Abbott’s sunbird, that is…) remains very common, as it does on Cosmoledo and Astove where human exploitation was only marginally less ruthless. Nevertheless, the possibility that this may be one of the rarest sunbirds in the world merits a genetic study and consideration of measures to protect the whole of the Aldabra group (i.e. as a World Heritage Site).”
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