Born in fire, ravaged by Malagasy pirates, ruled by the French and subsequently the site of copious coups, this volcanic archipelago continues its climb out of the Indian Ocean.

This four-island archipelago is dominated by mountainous volcanic landscapes. Grande Comore’s Mount Karthala continues to be one of the world’s largest active volcanoes. Being the youngest islands, Grande Comore and Moheli have immature soils that are not vey suitable for agriculture, enabling large sections of rainforests to escape the till.

The older islands of Anjouan and Grande Terre, have well-developed coral reefs that are rich in marine life. The archipelago is hot and sticky, with monsoon bringing torrential rain.

Thanks to its 400-million-year-old fossils showing protuberances resembling limbs, the coelacanth fish was long considered a hot contender to be one of the species that crawled from the sea to found life on dry land. You can imagine the surprise, then, when a fisherman hauled in a recently deceased coelacanth in 1938. Since another high-profile catch off Anjouan in 1952, scientists have been returning to Comoros. However, no one has yet succeeded in establishing how many of the fish exist, and none have yet been taken alive.