Diving into Seychelles’ adventure on remote, wildlife-abundant islands

I wade through the undergrowth of Astove’s abandoned copra plantation, a Seychelles’ island, where giant tortoises hide out like a platoon of jumbo army helmets beneath the palms. The ground is otherwise the domain of hermit crabs and fallen coconuts, a tiny shell-scattered atoll. Encircling eight square miles of lagoon, land here is just a thin border between sky and ocean: a landing strip for migratory birds and nesting ground for green turtles who plough tractor-like tracks through coral sand as powdery as virgin snow. Windswept isolation, piracy and inhospitality to humans – even if the palm trunks are slung as low as hammocks – have kept this one of the planet’s truly wild and protected places.

Astove is one of the most southerly of the 72 uninhabited atolls and cays that make up the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. It is flung 647 miles – and two plane rides – southwest of the capital, Victoria, on the Inner Island of Mahé, into the empty lapis lazuli expanse toward northern Madagascar. Its sand flats are as smooth as mother-of-pearl, steeped in an oyster-shaped reef in the western Indian Ocean – the former Sea of Zanj, feared by medieval Arab explorers – which rolls and roars in summer, whipped up by the southeast trade winds.

On the northwesterly shore the Shangri-La “ghost” yacht lies washed up. No one knows its past. Astove’s reef has destroyed vessels seeking harbour since the 16th century, leaving the atoll colonised by seabirds. Legend has it that after Portuguese frigate La Dom Royal sank here in 1760 and its crew made for Mozambique by longboat, its slaves were left behind. But the mosquitos and sharp blades of coral – or “champignons” – that shredded feet were nothing compared to human cruelty and they lived here freely for 35 years, counting on the reef to dash the recapture missions.

The underlying cause for the treacherousness of these waters and the impossibility of anchoring – a submarine Grand Canyon just offshore – is the reason I am here. I’m staying the night at Astove Coral House, the atoll’s first guesthouse; opened pre-pandemic, it was once the rustic home of British adventurer Mark Veevers-Carter. He established the plantation here in 1968, only to die in 1970. With a vertical drop of 3,000 feet, this reef is considered one of the world’s least-explored dive sites, its waters alive with Indo-Pacific species gliding en masse through bars of light. It’s where Jacques Cousteau filmed some of his 1956 documentary The Silent World, which pioneered underwater colour photography. In the shallows, lone fly-fishermen stand all day dressed like gangsters in hoodie rash vests and balaclavas just to catch a pewter-y giant trevally and release it.

That afternoon I snorkel the reef wall, gliding through the mercury surface, beneath which tiny fish twitch electrically like particles in a grainy film. Battalions of bluestripe snapper and Napoleon wrasse – some of the 1,000 species that swim here – jump in unison with the current before a vertical coral garden. With almost a mile of blackness beneath me, I might be floating in space. When I come up, the lava lamp glow of sunset makes me feel as if I am drifting on some fringe of the earth.

More than 1,000 miles from Kenya’s Mombasa, the Seychelles is already one of the world’s most remote and least populous nations. Of 122,000 Seychellois, only two per cent live on the Outer Islands – or “Zil Elwannyen Sesel” in the archipelago’s local French Creole, spoken with an East African accent as thick as coconut curry. The rest inhabit the granitic and coralline Inner Islands: 43 of a total of 115, which constitute about 175 square miles of land scattered in 529,000 of ocean territory. Made up of 99 per cent water, the Seychelles has become a role model Blue Economy with a future based on marine conservation.

To embark on a safari of the Outer Islands, I must first fly over the Inner ones – their world-famous beaches like chalk rings on the blackboard of the Mascarene Plateau below. I come in to land over the forested mounts of Mahé, the archipelago’s biggest island. Sprouting with rare orchids and endangered jellyfish trees, it is a hub of smart, branded hotels; tourism took off here in the 1970s, giving rise, today, to the highest GDP per capita in Africa. Until now, Seychellois resorts have been the barefoot little sisters to Mauritius’s luxury havens, but that’s changing. Last year Cheval Blanc joined the Four Seasons Resort Seychelles on Mahé, and the Waldorf Astoria opened on farther-flung Platte in the Outer Islands, 80 miles south – the first upscale marque incursion into this virgin territory. The Islands Development Company (IDC), which manages development on the Outer Islands, runs a strict “one island, one resort” policy. Meanwhile, environmental protection has become an integral part of the culture. Coco de mer, endemic coconuts shaped like sensual derrières that grow on Praslin and Curieuse, are the nation’s unofficial logo, seen everywhere right down to the passport stamp.

Today the Outer Islands are blooming with rare species and positive conservation stories. The Aldabra Group, which includes Astove and Cosmoledo atolls, hosts some of the planet’s largest seabird colonies. Unesco-protected Aldabra atoll is home to more than 150,000 giant tortoises – and has one of the largest green turtle breeding populations in the western Indian Ocean since hunting them was banned in 1994. “Eating turtle curry was part of our culture. Nowadays it would be -sacrilege,” says Gilly Mein, a taxi driver who takes me to the airport to start my journey to Astove and Cosmoledo via Alphonse atoll. The Seychelles is one of the few nations on track for its UN Sustainable Development Goals. About 60 per cent of its land is protected and, in 2018, it became the first country to launch a Blue Bond, raising $15 million from international investors to write off some of its national debt in exchange for a commitment to protect 30 per cent of its waters, with the Outer Islands to fall within this zone.

A 16-seater Beechcraft jet ferries me to Alphonse, my first Outer Islands stop, 250 miles south of Mahé. Colonies of seagrass form giant lily pads of emerald green in otherwise sapphire waters. The oceanic plant (which is a carbon sink 35 times more effective than rainforests) is not removed here for the sake of tourists. Overwater bungalows are also prohibited. “These aren’t the Maldives,” stresses my British guide, Elle Brighton, ecology and sustainability manager at Blue Safari, a low-impact, ocean-adventure company which brought the African eco-safari concept to the remote Outer Islands. “These are the Indian Ocean’s Galápagos.”