Nelson Island

Nelson Island is a small, low-lying coral island in the southern Chagos Archipelago, shaped roughly like a shoe with the toe pointing southwest, its highest point barely two metres above the Indian Ocean on a clear day and the island ringed by a beach of white coral sand that is at its widest on the eastern shore where the prevailing wind keeps the sand in constant small movement.

The interior of the island is covered in coconut palms, the remnant of plantations established in the 19th century, and among the palms the ruins of the Chagossian village are slowly being reclaimed by vegetation: concrete foundations, collapsed stone walls and the rusted remains of corrugated iron roofing that was the standard material for the modest houses that once housed the community.

The beach is a nesting site for green turtles and hawksbill turtles, and on the eastern shore especially it is possible to see the tracks of turtles that have come ashore overnight to lay their eggs, the broad flipper marks in the sand leading to and from a concealed nest site in the beach vegetation.

Nelson Island was historically one of the more significant settlements in the Chagos Archipelago, supporting a community of several hundred Chagossians who lived by fishing, coconut cultivation and the collection of seabird eggs, and the island served as a local administrative centre for the smaller outer islands in its immediate neighbourhood.

Like the other islands of the Chagos Archipelago, Nelson Island was evacuated between 1968 and 1973 and the former residents were relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles, a process that is extensively documented in the legal proceedings and inquiries that have followed the Chagossian communities in their decades-long fight for the right to return.

The surrounding reef is broad and relatively shallow, extending several hundred metres from the shoreline before dropping into deeper water, and the coral cover on the inner reef flat includes massive Porites heads that are estimated by marine biologists to be several centuries old and form the backbone of a reef structure that supports a dense and varied fish community.

The island is seldom visited today and the silence is broken only by the wind in the coconut fronds, the calls of the sooty terns that nest on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago in enormous noisy colonies, and the occasional passing fishing vessel that may anchor on the outer reef to take on water or supplies from the island.

Nelson Island is one of the few places in the Chagos Archipelago where the physical remains of Chagossian community life are still visible, making it a place of profound historical and emotional significance for the displaced community and their descendants.

The turtle nesting beaches on the eastern shore and the ancient Porites coral heads on the inner reef flat give the island both ecological and natural heritage value that extends well beyond its modest size.

The near-total absence of visitors means that the island retains a quality of stillness and remoteness that is extremely rare in a world where even the most remote islands are increasingly crossed by satellite tracks and AIS signals.