48 Fun Facts About Seychelles

Which royals honeymooned in Seychelles?

William and Catherine. Their ten days on a private island in 2011 were meant to be secret, but a Seychelles official announced their arrival, and the coastguard then helped to guard their privacy.

What is the capital and largest city of Seychelles?

Victoria. The French founded it as L'Etablissement du Roi; the British renamed it in 1841 after their young queen, and it remains one of the world's smallest capitals.

Seychelles is Africa's smallest country by land area and also ranks last on the continent by what measure?

Population. About 100,000 people were counted at the 2022 census, yet the islands claim more than 1.3 million square kilometres of ocean, roughly 3,000 times their land area.

Anse Source d'Argent, often called the world's most photographed beach, lies on which Seychelles island?

La Digue. Motor vehicles are tightly restricted there, so the bicycle remains the island's main transport and most visitors pedal to the beach.

Which Aldabra bird is the last flightless bird left in the western Indian Ocean?

The white-throated rail. Fossils show an earlier flightless rail was wiped out when the atoll flooded about 136,000 years ago; the same species then flew back in and lost the power of flight a second time.

Whose Portuguese fleet made the first recorded European sighting of Seychelles?

Vasco da Gama's. No landing was recorded then: the first came about a century later, in 1609, when English merchant sailors spent several days ashore.

Seychelles was named in 1756 in honour of the finance minister of which French ruler?

Louis XV. An expedition from Mauritius staked France's claim that year by laying a Stone of Possession, and named the islands after Jean Moreau de Sechelles, who ran the king's treasury.

How did Seychelles' French commandant de Quinssy respond when a British naval squadron arrived in 1794?

He surrendered without a fight. With no means of resisting, de Quinssy signed terms that left the settlers alone, renewed them when warships came back, and the colony flourished by supplying all comers.

The British general Charles Gordon claimed which legendary place lay in Seychelles?

Eden. Gordon, later killed at Khartoum, visited in 1881 and argued that a palm forest there was the Garden of Eden and its coco de mer palm the Bible's tree of knowledge.

Which prime minister took power in Seychelles' 1977 coup and stayed president for the next 27 years?

France-Albert Rene. He denied knowing in advance of the plot, carried out by supporters trained in Tanzania, yet he accepted the presidency and did not give it up until 2004.

Mike Hoare's 1981 mercenaries tried to enter Seychelles disguised as what?

Holidaying rugby players. They also posed as a beer-drinking charity club bringing toys for orphans, until a customs officer found a rifle hidden in the luggage and a gun battle began.

Seychelles president Danny Faure made a live 2019 plea to protect the oceans while speaking from where?

A submersible on the seabed, 120 metres down off the outer islands. In a T-shirt and shorts, Faure told viewers that we have better maps of Mars than of the ocean floor.

Wavel Ramkalawan, elected in 2020 as the first opposition president since 1977, had what profession?

Anglican priest. He won at his sixth attempt, having lost the previous presidential election by only about 200 votes.

Which actor's foundation helped fund the deal that swapped Seychelles' debt for marine parks?

Leonardo DiCaprio. In the first debt swap of its kind for the sea, conservationists bought about $22 million of Seychelles' debt at a discount, and the country created two vast marine parks in return.

Aldabra atoll, a UNESCO site, is home to more of which reptile than anywhere else on Earth?

Giant tortoises: 100,000 or more of them. Sailors ate their way through the giant tortoises of almost every other island in the region, but Aldabra was too remote and too hard to land on.

After a 1960s campaign saved Aldabra from becoming a military air base, the base was built on which island instead?

Diego Garcia. Scientists and MPs shamed the planners into sparing Aldabra's wildlife, so the base went to an atoll whose own islanders were then removed to make way for it.

The coco de mer palm, which grows wild on only two islands, is famous for producing what?

The world's heaviest seed. Long before anyone found the palm, its nuts washed up on distant shores, and people came to believe they grew on trees beneath the sea: the name means 'coconut of the sea'.

The Vallee de Mai, a World Heritage Site of coco de mer palms, is on which island?

Praslin. The valley's palm forest stood untouched until the 1930s, which is why UNESCO lists it as a remnant of natural forest preserved in almost its original state.

Which rare Seychelles tree, found wild at only four mountain sites, is the sole species in its genus?

The jellyfish tree. For decades it was written off as extinct, until a few trees were found in 1970; it is named for its fruit, which opens out like a tiny jellyfish.

An exiled sultan reportedly found which country's anthem tune in Seychelles?

Malaysia. The exiled Sultan of Perak and his family are said to have picked up the melody, a popular song of the day, at concerts in Seychelles; Perak made it its anthem, and in 1957 it became 'Negaraku'.

What does Seychelles' flag, adopted in 1996, show?

Five oblique bands fanning out from one corner. Adopted once rival parties shared power, the flag blends their colours and replaced one that was simply the ruling party's banner without its sun.

What is Seychelles' currency?

The Seychellois rupee. Pegged to other currencies for decades, it was floated in November 2008 as the country took an IMF bailout in the middle of a foreign-currency crisis.

Mass tourism reached Seychelles only after what opened in the early 1970s?

An international airport. Britain paid for it to compensate Seychelles for outer islands it had detached in 1965 for military use, and it turned a plantation economy into one built on visitors.

Seychelles' moutya, a bonfire dance on UNESCO's heritage list since 2021, was begun by which group?

Enslaved workers. Brought from Africa by French settlers, they danced it at night in the forest, out of sight of the plantation house, as a comfort against hardship and a way of resisting servitude.

Most Seychellois belong to which church, a legacy of the islands' early settlers?

Roman Catholic. Those settlers were French, and their church held on through a century and a half of British rule: Anglicans, the colonial power's own church, are only about one in twenty.

Brendon Grimshaw turned Seychelles' Moyenne Island into what?

Nature reserve. The Yorkshireman bought the island for £8,000 in 1962 and spent decades replanting it and bringing back native wildlife; it is now one of the smallest national parks in the world.

In 2014 Seychelles overtook the United States for the world's highest rate of what?

Incarceration. In so small a country fewer than 800 prisoners were enough to top the world table, and by 2022 the rate had fallen by about two-thirds.

Seychelles has been a key participant in fighting piracy committed mainly by whom?

Somali pirates. With attacks threatening its fishing and tourist trades, Seychelles became one of the region's two main centres for putting captured pirates on trial.

Which mountain, standing in the national park of the same name, is the highest peak in Seychelles?

Morne Seychellois rises to 905 metres. Much of the forest on its slopes is regrowth, because settlers felled the original hardwoods to repair ships and build houses.

According to legend, what did the buccaneer La Buse hurl into the crowd at his hanging in 1730?

A coded message. In the legend he cried that his treasure belonged to whoever could understand it, and a father and son have since devoted their lives to hunting for it on Seychelles' main island.

Which tiny Seychelles animal, which has no middle ear, was found in 2013 to hear through its mouth?

A frog. Gardiner's frog is barely a centimetre long, and X-ray scans showed that its mouth acts as a resonator, amplifying sound and passing it through bone to the inner ear.

Britain exiled Archbishop Makarios to Seychelles in 1956, accusing him of sedition on which island?

Cyprus. Makarios was held for a year as a 'guest' of the governor, was freed in 1957, and went on to become the first president of an independent Cyprus.

Seychelles' Curieuse island was for decades used as what?

A leper colony. The ruins of its leprosarium still stand on the shore and the old doctor's house became a museum, while the island around them is now a national park.

The Seychelles microcontinent split off during the breakup of which supercontinent?

Gondwana. Seychelles stayed joined to India longest of all, and their parting is usually tied to the vast Deccan lava eruptions, which left a sliver of continent stranded far out at sea.

Which fish, canned at a factory that is a major employer in the capital, has long been Seychelles' chief export?

Tuna. Cans of it have long since overtaken the plantation crops that once made up the islands' exports.

What bleached most of Seychelles' coral reefs in 1998?

El Niño. The strong 1997-98 event overheated the sea around the islands, and most of their reefs were bleached and badly damaged.

In the 1830s Seychelles' planters ran short of labour and switched from cotton to which trio of crops?

Cinnamon, vanilla and copra. These crops needed far fewer hands than cotton or grain, but they fed no one, so the islands came to depend on imported food.

Who was living on Seychelles when the first French settlers arrived in 1770?

Nobody at all. Gulf traders and Portuguese sailors had known of the islands for centuries, yet there is no evidence that anyone settled there before the French.

Which French island sits alongside Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar and the Comoros in the Indian Ocean Commission?

Réunion. France belongs on the island's behalf, so the commission, given its formal footing by an accord signed in Seychelles in 1984, can call itself Africa's only regional body made up entirely of islands.

Seychelles' main islands lie about 1,600 km east of which mainland African country?

Kenya. The main islands sit only about four degrees south of the Equator, so temperatures there barely change from one month to the next.

Stade Linité is home to Seychelles' national team in which sport?

Football. When Seychelles hosted the region's island games in 2011, the home side beat Mauritius on penalties in the final there to win the title for the first time.

Which FIFA tournament did Seychelles host in May 2025, the first time it had been staged in Africa?

Beach Soccer World Cup. The hosts lost all three of their group games, but the final was a thriller: Brazil beat Belarus 4-3 to keep the title.

Seychelles' first president was overthrown in 1977 while he was abroad attending what?

A Commonwealth leaders' meeting. James Mancham was in Britain for the summit when armed supporters of his own prime minister seized control, and he stayed in exile for the next fifteen years.

Britain won formal title to Seychelles under a Treaty of Paris signed at the close of which conflict?

The Napoleonic Wars. Britain mainly wanted to stop French privateers using the islands as a base, and it had already taken them in practice, along with Mauritius, before the treaty was signed.

When the University of Seychelles opened in 2009, most of its degree courses came from a university in which city?

London. The University of London supplied the courses for a university meant to stop the islands' brightest students leaving for good.

Which German scientist suggested that the Seychelles bank had drifted away from Madagascar?

Alfred Wegener. Known in his day as a meteorologist, he proposed continental drift in 1912, but it was the 1950s before studies of magnetism in ancient rocks revived serious interest in the idea.

Which fish is boiled, mashed and mixed with citrus, onion and spices in Seychelles' 'satini reken' chutney?

Shark. In Seychelles a 'chutney' is a salad of finely grated ingredients, so the shark arrives looking like turmeric-yellow mince, soured with lime and the juice of the bilimbi fruit.

Mike Hoare, who led the failed 1981 Seychelles coup, was the model for Richard Burton's mercenary colonel in which film?

The Wild Geese. Hoare had given his Congo mercenaries that nickname and served as the 1978 film's technical adviser; three years later his own raid ended with him in a South African jail.