Decazes Island

Decazes Island is an 800 m long island off the Loubet coast of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula . At the southwest end of the Biscoe Islands archipelago , it is 2.5 km southwest of Belding Island . It is one of the largest of the numerous islets and reef rocks that line the north side of Matha Strait .

The area around the island was mapped during the Fifth French Antarctic Expedition (1908–1910) by polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot . Charcot assumed a headland at the southern end of an island and therefore named it Pointe Decazes . Surveys by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1959 revealed the true nature of this geographic object, so the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee transferred Charcot's designation to the entire island on July 7th of that year. It is named after the French nobleman and sportsman Jean Élie Octave Louis Sévère Amanien Decazes de Glücksbierg (1864–1912), 3rd Duke of Decazes and sponsor of the Charcots research trip.

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