* Seychelles claims the Glorioso Islands

The Seychelles President claims that this has opened the door to a new industry for his country and encouraged economic growth by further removing over-reliance on traditional trades like fisheries and tourism, which is now falling rapidly as the country's main income but nevertheless, has experienced significant growth in recent years.

Mauritius claims Tromelin ; the Comoros and Seychelles claim the Glorioso Islands ; the Comoros and Madagascar claim Banc du Geyser ; and Madagascar claims the remaining islands.

* Alphonse Atoll, in the Outer Islands of the Seychelles.

* Alphonse Group, a group of atolls in the Outer Islands of the Seychelles.

* Alphonse Island, in the Outer Islands of the Seychelles.

193-Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d ' Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, North Korea, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

In 1972, the UK decided to close the plantations throughout the Chagos, including those on Peros Banhos and the Salomon Islands, and deported the Ilois to their ancestral homes on either the Seychelles or Mauritius.

* several species of giant tortoise on Seychelles and Mascarene Islands

Examples are Madagascar and Socotra off Africa ; New Zealand ; New Caledonia ; the Kerguelen Islands ; and some of the Seychelles.

The UNCCD has 194 country Parties: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d ' Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, the Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Modern Spanish tuna purse seiner in the Seychelles Islands

The only surviving giant tortoises are on the Seychelles and Galápagos Islands, and can grow to over in length, and weigh about.

* 1502 — Returning from India, Vasco da Gama discovers the Amirante Islands ( Seychelles ).

The distribution of atolls around the globe is instructive: most of the world's atolls are in the Pacific Ocean ( with concentrations in the Tuamotu Islands, Caroline Islands, Marshall Islands, Coral Sea Islands, and the island groups of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tokelau ) and Indian Ocean ( the Atolls of the Maldives, the Laccadive Islands, the Chagos Archipelago and the Outer Islands of the Seychelles ).

The Inner Islands is the collective term for 42 islands with a total area of 243. 7 km², 54 % of the Seychelles area but with more than 98 % of the population.

The Outer Islands comprise 211. 3 km² ( 46 % of the Seychelles ), but less than 2 % of the population.

By comparison, estimates of the population density per square kilometer of the Indian Ocean's other island microstates ranged from 241 ( Seychelles ) to 690 ( Maldives ) in 1993.

In 1985 Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles agreed to admit Comoros as the fourth member of the Indian Ocean Commission ( IOC ), an organization established in 1982 to encourage regional cooperation.

They have been sighted, for example, in the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian Ocean around the Seychelles.

Since Seychelles ' independence in 1976, per capita output in this Indian Ocean archipelago has expanded to roughly seven times the old near-subsistence level.

The global recession and piracy in the Indian Ocean hit Seychelles hard in 2009, with the GDP projected to contract by 7. 5 percent.

Seychelles follows a policy of what it describes as " positive " nonalignment and strongly supports the principle of reduced superpower presence in the Indian Ocean.

The Seychelles government is one of the proponents of the Indian Ocean zone of peace concept and it has promoted an end to the United States presence on Diego Garcia.

In an effort to reduce increasing piracy in the nearby region, Seychelles requested Indian Navy to carry out anti piracy operations in her waters.

The Seychelles also praised the Indian Navy for their anti-piracy operations.

** The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands ( on June 23, 1976 Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches are returned to the Seychelles ).

The Seychelles is a small island nation located in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar and about east of Kenya.

The Seychelles is part of the granitic Mascarene Plateau which broke off from the Indian Plate about 65 mya.

They have colonised most of the world's oceanic islands, reaching eastern Polynesia and the Chatham Islands in the Pacific, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean.

Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands are home to ten endemic families of flowering plants ; eight are endemic to Madagascar ( Asteropeiaceae, Didymelaceae, Didiereaceae, Kaliphoraceae, Melanophyllaceae, Physenaceae, Sarcolaenaceae, and Sphaerosepalaceae ), one to Seychelles ( Mesdusagynaceae ) and one to the Mascarene Islands ( Psiloxylaceae ).

Aldabra, the world's second largest coral atoll, is in the Aldabra Group of islands in the Indian Ocean that form part of the Seychelles.

The Aldabra Atoll, along with Des Roches and Farquhar, was part of the British Indian Ocean Territory from 1965 until Seychelles independence in 1976.

Colonies were also founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon ( Réunion, 1664 ), Isle de France ( Mauritius, 1718 ), and the Seychelles ( 1756 ).

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, most of France's colonies were restored to it by Britain, notably Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies, French Guiana on the coast of South America, various trading posts in Senegal, the Île Bourbon ( Réunion ) in the Indian Ocean, and France's tiny Indian possessions ; though Britain finally annexed Saint Lucia, Tobago, the Seychelles, and the Isle de France ( now Mauritius ).

It has invaded ecosystems from Hawaii to Seychelles, and formed supercolonies on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

It has been introduced into a wide range of tropical and subtropical environments including Caribbean islands, some Indian Ocean islands ( Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, the Cocos Islands and the Christmas Islands ) and some Pacific islands ( New Caledonia, Hawaii, French Polynesia, Okinawa, Vanuatu, Micronesia and the Galapagos archipelago )

The Western Indo-Pacific covers the western and central portion of the Indian Ocean, including the Africa's east coast, the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and Andaman Sea, as well as the coastal waters surrounding Madagascar, the Seychelles, Comoros, Mascarene Islands, Maldives, and Chagos Archipelago.

Its discovery also adds to the evidence that Madagascar and the Seychelles separated from the Indian landmass sometime well after the breakup of Gondwana had started.

The original idea was to place it in the Atlantic Ocean near Tenerife, but because of the ground collision of two Boeing 747s there a few days before publication it was moved to the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles Islands.

Caecilians are found in wet tropical regions of Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka, parts of East and West Africa, the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, Central America and in northern and eastern South America.

The Seychelles, which is an independent island chain in the Indian Ocean, formerly a colony of both Britain and France has a distinct kind of music.