Positionnement de la péninsule Courbet sur l'île principale des Kerguelen.

The Courbet Peninsula (Péninsule Courbet) is a vast peninsula occupying the northeastern portion of the principal island of Kerguelen. In the south of the peninsula is Port-aux-Français, the principal station of the archipelago. The Kerguelen Archipelago is in the southern Indian Ocean at 49°20 S, 70°20 E. The main island Kerguelen, originally called Desolation Island, is 6,675 km2 and it is surrounded by another 300 smaller outcrops, forming an archipelago of 7,215 km². The climate is cold, very windy... Port-aux-Français is the capital settlement of the French Kerguelen Islands in the far southern Indian Ocean. ...

Physical geography

Coasts

The southern frontage of the Courbet Peninsula faces the presqu'île Ronarc'h and thus delimits the northern part of the Gulf of Morbihan. One reaches it by the east via a master key which one calls Passe Royale and which skirts the short peninsula which prolongs the peninsula towards south-east, the presqu'île du Prince de Galles. The northern frontage of this peninsula shelters a bay much smaller than the preceding one, called Norwegian Bay.

More in north, while skirting the east coast of the péninsule Courbet, and after having passed Cape Ratmanoff, that is to say the eastern point of the principal island of Kerguelen, one finds a coastal lake, Lake Marly. Continuously towards the north, one reaches then Cape Digby, which roughly marks the north-western point of the peninsula.

More in the west, on the northern frontage, the course Cotter is the most northern point. The coast indeed spins towards south-west once this course last and reached soon a news small stretch of water relatively open on the ocean, the Accessible Bay. Further, it delimits finally the south-east of a bay more extended much, Hillsborough Bay. Shelter of the Bellouard small island and especially of the island of the Port, the latter is closed by the Joffre Peninsula in the North-West and the buttresses of the Ross glacier in south-east. With Accessible bay, it forms a vast gulf called Golfe of the Whalers.

Interior

The peninsula is relatively flat and is characterized by altitudes not exceeding 200 meters.

It is connected to the remainder of the island via what one calls the Central Plate, the Western half is much more broken and culminates with 979 meters in height. With the foot of the top the North-West towards south-east stretches a small valley called Studer Valley in the prolongation of which Port-aux-Francais is.

Human geography

In addition to Port-aux-Francais, the principal station of Kerguelen, the southern frontage of the Courbet Peninsula also shelters Molloy, another coastal site on the Gulf of Morbihan, inhabited by scientists.