France’s smallest overseas department wraps a vast lagoon
Mayotte, a French overseas department and region in the northern Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and Mozambique, covers only about 374 square kilometres—far smaller than Martinique—yet a 160-kilometre coral reef encloses a 1,100-square-kilometre lagoon among the world’s largest and deepest.
Grande-Terre (Maore) stretches 39 by 22 kilometres to Mount Benara’s 660-metre summit; Petite-Terre (Pamanzi) holds Dzaoudzi, the official capital, and Pamandzi’s airport across 11 square kilometres. Shimaore and Kibushi are native tongues beside official French, which 63 percent of people fourteen and older could speak in the 2007 census. A sultanate rose in 1500; Andriantsoly sold the islands to France in 1841. Today the population is overwhelmingly Muslim. It stayed French when neighbouring Comoros voted for independence in 1974, and after a 2009 referendum became France's 101st department on 31 March 2011.
In 2019 annual growth hit 3.8 percent, half the residents were under seventeen, and 48 percent were foreign nationals—many from Comoros drawn by French infrastructure despite Mayotte ranking as France’s poorest department. An INSEE 2018 report found over 83 percent living under the French poverty line, 40 percent in metal shacks, and 29 percent of households without running water. The Arabic-rooted name may shrink Jazīrat al-Mawt, “island of death,” a nod to circling reefs.
The lagoon averages five to ten kilometres wide and reaches 100 metres deep, with a rare double barrier and about a hundred coral islets such as Mtsamboro. Volcanic soils stay fertile; Mbouzi islet is a nature reserve. Mamoudzou on Grande-Terre hosts the prefecture and departmental council. Geologically it is the oldest of the four big Comoro islands: the southern volcanic centre was active from about 7.7 to 2.7 million years ago and the northern one from 4.7 to 1.4 million. Deep magma still stirs: on 11 November 2018 a seismic signal lasting over 20 minutes was picked up as far away as Hawaii, yet nobody on the island felt it; the swarm was later traced to a newly found undersea volcano 50 kilometres offshore at 3,500 metres depth.
Biologists count at least 250 coral species and 760 kinds of tropical fish in these waters, plus more than 1,300 plant species, half of them endemic. Only fruit bats count as native mammals, and illegal clearing has left primary forest on barely 5 percent of the land.
Source: Mayotte
