reef." Fishing is banned within the reserve area. Diego Garcia is a Ramsar site. Landforms Of the 55 islands of the Chagos Archipelago, Diego Garcia is the largest. Aside from this, the main islands are the Egmont Islands, Danger Island, Aigle (Eagle) Islands, Three Brothers, Nelson Island, Salomon Islands, and Peros Banhos at the northern end of the Chagos Archipelago. Diego Garcia The coral atoll of Diego Garcia is approximately east of the coast of Africa (at Tanzania), south-southwest of the southern tip of India (at Kanyakumari) and west-northwest of the west coast of Australia (at Cape Range National Park, Western Australia). Diego Garcia lies at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge — a vast submarine range in the Indian Ocean. The total area encompassed by the atoll is . At the entrance to the lagoon, there are three small islands, and these are East Island (), Middle Island (), and West Island (). In some areas, the atoll has both marshes and wetlands. The ecosystem consists of undisturbed tropical forests. Peros Banhos Atoll The Peros Banhos Islands, which are the largest group on the Chagos Bank, consists of 27 islands scattered around the rim of an immense lagoon, which has a perimeter of and enclosed some 310 square km of water. They consist of several groups of islets and reefs; deep channels separate them. They had a population of some 400 islanders before the evacuation in 1965, the largest number living on Île du Coin in the southwest corner of the atoll (in the previous century, the dominant island was Île Diamant in the northwest corner of the atoll); in all, there were seven inhabited islands. Salomon Atoll Some 25 km east of Peros Banhos Atoll, the smaller Salomon group comprises eleven islands clustered around a lagoon measuring 8 km long and 5 km wide. Prior to the removal of its population, six of the islands were inhabited with a total of about 250 islanders. Île Boddam in the southwest was the principal settlement, while Île Takamaka in the east was the centre of boatbuilding for the archipelago. Nelson Island, Three Brother Islands and Eagle Islands Lying between Diego Garcia in the south, and the Peros Banhos and Salomon Atolls in the north, the remaining coralline islands are scattered over a wide area of the Great Chagos Bank, an area of atolls, reefs and shoals with an average