Astove

Island · Outer atoll

१The island

Astove in short.

Astove is a small, nearly closed atoll in the far south of Seychelles, a thousand and forty kilometres from Victoria, near the Aldabra group. Divers come for one thing: the Astove Wall.

Can you go?

Expedition only, in short seasonal windows, through the operators who work the atoll.

Photographs, under Creative Commons: NASA, Public domain

२The island

The wall

The reef edge drops almost vertically from the shallows into open ocean, covered in life and patrolled by large fish. It is among the more dramatic dives in the Indian Ocean and it is the reason anybody makes the journey.

The flats inside and around the atoll hold the same fly-fishing that Cosmoledo and Alphonse are known for, with even fewer people on them.

३The island

Isolation, and a wreck

Astove has no regular tourism and its isolation is the whole of its character. There is no record of settlement before 1760, when a Portuguese frigate ran aground on it. The name is thought to come from As Doze, the twelve, a Portuguese chart name from this coast.

४Getting there

How you arrive

By air and boat, on organised expeditions with fixed seasons. There is no independent access.

५The facts

The sheet.

Checked 2 September 2026 against the sources named in our island file.

Group: the Aldabra group
South west of Victoria: 1,041 km
Known for: the Astove Wall
First recorded wreck: 1760

६Questions

What people ask.

Can we visit Astove?

Expedition only, in short seasonal windows, through the operators who work the atoll.

How do you get to Astove?

By air and boat, on organised expeditions with fixed seasons. There is no independent access.

७The rest of it

What we do arrange.

We do not sell islands, and most of these could not be sold to anybody. What we do arrange is everything that gets you to them and around them once you land.