Amsterdam Island

Amsterdam Island lies eighty kilometres north of Saint-Paul and is the warmest of the French southern lands, green rather than grey, with a peat plateau on top and cliffs falling to the sea on its western side. The Martin-de-Viviès station sits on the low northern shore. The island is the only place in the world where the Amsterdam albatross breeds, a few dozen pairs on the plateau, and it holds the largest colony anywhere of the yellow-nosed albatross. Fur seals crowd the beaches below. The air is clean enough that the station measures the world's background atmosphere here.