Île Amsterdam

The first person known to have sighted the island was the Spanish explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano, on 18 March 1522, during his circumnavigation of the world. Elcano called it (), because he couldn't find a safe place to land and his crew was desperate for water after 40 days of sailing from Timor. On 17 June 1633, Dutch colonial governor and mariner Anthonie van Diemen sighted the island, and named it after his ship, . The first recorded landing on the island occurred in December 1696, led by the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh. French mariner Pierre François Péron wrote that he was marooned on the island between 1792 and 1795. Péron's , in which he describes his experiences, were published in a limited edition, now an expensive collector's item. However, and were often confused at the time, and Péron may have been marooned on Saint-Paul. Amsterdam and St. Paul islands were recommended in 1786 for a convict settlement by Alexander Dalrymple, the Examiner of Sea-Journals for the East India Company, when the British government was considering New South Wales and Norfolk Island for such a settlement. An investigation of those islands was subsequently undertaken in December 1792 and January 1793 by George Lord Macartney, Britain's first ambassador to China, during his voyage to that country, and he concluded that they were not suitable for settlement. Sealers are said to have landed on the island, for the first time, in 1789. Between that date and 1876, 47 sealing vessels are recorded at the island, 9 of which were wrecked. Relics of the sealing era can still be found. On 11 October 1833, the British barque Lady Munro was wrecked at the island. Of the 97 persons aboard, 21 survivors were picked up two weeks later by a US sealing schooner, General Jackson. John Balleny in command of the exploration and sealing vessel visited the island in November 1838 in search of seals. He returned with a few fish and reported having seen the remains of a hut and the carcass of a whale. The islands of and were first claimed by France in June 1843. A decree of 8 June 1843 mandated the Polish captain Adam Mieroslawski to take into possession and administer in the name of France both islands. The decree as well as the ship's log from Olympe from 1 and 3 July 1843, stating that the islands had been taken into possession by Mieroslawski, are still preserved. In January 1871 an attempt to settle the island was made by a party led by Heurtin, a French resident of Réunion. After seven months, their attempts to raise cattle and grow crops were fruitless, and they returned to Réunion, abandoning the cattle on the island. In May 1880 circumnavigated the island searching for missing ship Knowsley Hall. A cutter and gig were despatched to the island to search for signs of habitation. There was a flagpole on Hoskin Point and north were two huts, one of which had an intact roof and contained three bunks, empty casks, an iron pot and the eggshells and feathers of sea-birds. There was also an upturned serviceable boat in the other hut, believed to belong to the fishermen who visited the island. In 1892, the crew of the French sloop Bourdonnais, followed by the ship ''L'Eure'' in 1893, again took possession of Saint-Paul and Amsterdam Island in the name of the French government. The island was attached to the French colony of Madagascar from 21 November 1924 until 6 August 1955 when the French Southern and Antarctic Lands was formed. (Madagascar gained independence in 1958.) The first French base on was established in 1949, and was originally called . It is now the research station, named after Paul de Martin de Viviès who, with twenty-three others, spent the winter of 1949 on the island. The station was originally named Camp Heurtin and has been in operation since 1 January 1981, superseding the first station, . ==Amateur radio==

From 1987 to 1998, there were frequent amateur radio operations from Amsterdam Island. There was a resident radio amateur operator in the 1950s, using callsign FB8ZZ. In January 2014 Clublog listed Amsterdam and St Paul Islands as the seventh most-wanted DXCC entity. On 25 January 2014 a DX-pedition landed on Amsterdam Island using MV Braveheart and began amateur radio operations from two separate locations using callsign FT5ZM. The DX-pedition remained active until 12 February and achieved over 170,000 two-way contacts with amateur radio stations worldwide. ==Environment==

cloud formation, caused by lee waves from Île Amsterdam (lower left).|left Geography The island is a potentially active volcano. There are no lakes nor rivers on the island; the only freshwater bodies are small ponds on the plateau. The low altitude areas are dry and fires have happened repeatedly. All the rocks are tholeiitic basalt and the oldest basalt sampled is no more than 720,000 years old. There are two stratovolcanoes being which dominates and is younger and Le Mount du Fernand. Vents manifest as either cones or craters include Cratere Antonelli, Le Brulot, Le Chaudron, Le Cyclope, Crateres Dumas, Le Forneau, Cratere Inferieur, Grande Marmite, Cratere Hebert, Museau De Tanche, Cratere de l'Olympe, Cratere Superieur, Crateres Venus, and Cratere Vulcain (see map on this page). There is a magma chamber located at between depth below Amsterdam Island. The plateau which extends north west towards the Nieuw Amsterdam Fracture Zone (Amsterdam Fracture Zone) and south to beyond the island of St Paul with its presently known active area being delimited by the St. Paul Fracture Zone, is a feature of the sea floor near the Southeast Indian Ridge, which is an active spreading center between the Antarctic plate that the island lies on, and the Australian Plate. Whichever hot spot is responsible is moving south as Île Amsterdam rocks are older than St. Paul rocks. Climate Île Amsterdam has a mild, oceanic climate, Cfb under the Köppen climate classification, with a mean annual temperature of , annual rainfall of , persistent westerly winds and high levels of humidity. Under the Trewartha climate classification the island is well inside the maritime subtropical zone due to its very low diurnal temperature variation keeping means high. Meteo Climat (record highs and lows) Phylica arborea (Thouars) trees occur on Amsterdam, which is the only place where they form a low forest, although the trees are also found on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island. It is called the Great Forest (). Before human presence, it covered the lowlands of the island, until forest fires set by sealers cleared much of it in 1825. The Phylica of Île Amsterdam were previously assigned to Phylica nitida (Lam.), but phylogenetic studies showed they do not belong to the same species as the Phylica nitida from highlands of Réunion and Mauritius. From 1696 to 1988, the botanical composition of the coastal areas is deeply impacted by wildfires, wood-cutting, and by the introduction of alien plants and animals, especially cattle. Sailors from , who visit the island on 27 May 1880, describe the vegetation as: Both the Plateau des Tourbières and Falaises d'Entrecasteaux have been identified as Important Bird Areas by BirdLife International, the latter for its large breeding colony of Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses. In 2007 it is decided to eradicate the population of cattle entirely, resulting in the slaughter of the cattle between 2008 and 2010. Subsequently, native plants gradually recolonize the lowlands, and the population of Amsterdam Island albatrosses recovers from 5 breeding pairs in 1983 to 51 in 2018. From the 18th century on, rodents and feral cats introduced by humans are significant threats to native wildlife. and they damage saplings, while mice eat seeds. An eradication campaign of these invasive species is started in 2020. Cats are removed between 2020 and 2022. Poisoned bait is spread in 2024. With this campaign, the survival rate of Indian yellow-nosed albatross chicks in the end of March 2023 amounts to 52%, while it was 4% in 2019 and 2020. ==See also==