evidence: Many people who visit Mauritius are unaware that it is just one of the islands in the republic. Nearly 500 km north east of the island is a long thin archipelago called St Brandon, where around 60 fishermen live. Over a thousand kilometres north are two sausage shaped islands collectively known as Agaléga, where about 300 people live cultivating coconuts and fishing in a narrow lagoon. It has an airstrip and rudimentary social institutions, but no running water and secondary education has to occur off island. A third island, Tromelin, is also claimed by Mauritius, which is little more than an airstrip on a coral platform, barely 1500 m long. As with many small rocks in the ocean, the claims on its possession are more about the rights that gives countries over the sea and what is under it. No wonder both the French and the Seychelles also claim Tromelin given it has no other land for 200km around, and so gives a nation an enormous Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ. All that fuss just for a colony of booby birds. Mauritius even lays a claim to Diego Garcia – a contentious part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.