Terre Adélie, Antarctica
2011
This week was quiet because we had a snowstorm during several days and I was on duty for the task of base life on Tuesday and Sunday (setting the table, dishes, cleaning). Indeed, the last two weeks were work intensive and I had to exchanged my day of duty with some friends here.
The life on the base is great. People are very nice and we have a lot of fun, just like a big family. The community life in a remote place creates very intense relationships. In the pictures you can see that we have a great time with Xavier, who is in charge of the radio communication and Sophie our fieldworker. Last Saturday we had a party for two birthdays: for the post officer Philou, and for Guillaume, who is working on the atmosphere, especially the ozone hole covering Antarctica. Each person gets a special present. There is no market here, thus you need to be very creative. Sophie and I created a tee-shirt for Guillaume representing “DDU by night”. It shows Guillaume dancing with penguins and the green laser that he is using for his atmospheric analysis during winter. For Philou we created a giant piece of mail. Indeed, mail plays an important role here because the French government designs special stamps each year for the Austral French Territories and people create their own logo, representing their job here. These stamps are unique and many people have special collections of them.
Tuesday we discovered the first egg of a snow petrel. There are still few of them, with only three eggs being observed so far.
We checked the skua territories to see if there were eggs there. We also checked Petrel Island and the island of the archipelago. Most skuas have laid two eggs. Currently, skuas are mainly eating eggs of Adelie penguins. Philou took an exceptional picture of a skua attacking a penguin and robbing an egg (copyright: Philou TA61).
Friday, we went far from Petrel Island to the control skua group at Cap Geodesie and Mid- Winter Island close to the continent. In the pictures, from the left to the right you can see Anais, Coralie, both veterinary working on the fasting processes of penguins, myself, Agnes and Sophie, our two fieldworkers. They are a minority of girls on the base, but all of them are working in biology (picture from the doctor Yves Marie)!
Sunday we saw crabeater seal, and Guillaume is kindly sharing the picture with us (copyright: Guillaume TA61).
An unexpected visitor was also here that day: the chinstrap penguins. Chinstrap penguins usually breed further North, and not in Terre Adelie. This one probably lost his way. The amusing fact is that he was incubating an egg in an Adelie penguin colony, probably an egg abandoned by an Adelie penguin (copyright: Agnes TA62).
The boat finally came back to Hobart. This year was the longest trip in forty years, one month and a half! I will probably spend Christmas on the base, instead of at home and come back early January.
Life on The Base
12/6/11 - 12/12/11
