Photo album: "In the neighbourhood of the base"

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A Sunday afternoon, taking advantage of the fine weather, we take a few-hour rest and go to explore the neighbourhood of Port-aux-Français base. 

Mount Ross, altitude 1850 m, this summit has been inviolate for a long time. It will be conquered, by a French alpinist team, only in January 1975. A south African team will be forced to give up a second attempt, a few weeks later, because of the bad weather. Though the altitude of this peak seems moderate, the conditions there are very difficult because of the ice-covered unstable rock. The ice begins nearly at sea level and the weather conditions change very quickly with violent winds and precipitation.

Lichen-covered rocks.

Floating stripes of giant kelps (Durvillea) which abound along the cost.

On these rocks, a group of Kerguelen cormorants.

Cormorants eat only fishes. Their plumage partially permeable lets the water go through and allows them to spend less energy when they dive because they wet themselves quicker than the other birds. The plumage of the other birds, generally impermeable, keeps some air imprisoned and tends to make them float.

A characteristic of Kerguelen cormorants, in addition to their white belly, is their blue eyes.

We meet four king penguins, they are second in height, to the emperor penguins. They are 85 to 95 centimetres high and weigh 8 to 16 kilograms. The lonesome penguin, at left of the photo, is a gentoo penguin. These penguins are 50 to 70 cm high and weigh 5 to 7 kg. On the beach, we can see accumulation of fragments of kelps brought by the sea.

Another group of king penguins.

Two king penguins in the middle of acaena, Kerguelen main vegetation.

A Kerguelen tern.

Take off of the tern.

The yellow flowers in the middle of the acaena carpet, on the bank of the brook, are not of Kerguelen origin: they are dandelion flowers, accidentally imported, they can be seen in different places around Port-aux-Français base.

Pierre Bouvet, a friend from Groupe de Recherche Ionosphérique, shoots a close-up on acaena.

I hurry up to imitate him.

Acaena hold back the sandy soil and keep it from being carried away by the elements (wind and rain). Thus, there are formation of tufts rising over barren zones.

Taking off of a sub-Antarctic skua. These birds differ from their Antarctic homologues by their darker plumage.

A young elephant seal is watching us.

A rabbit runs away in front of a group of elephant seals. Rabbits were introduced many years ago to give food to possible future shipwrecked men. They have multiplied and have invaded nearly the whole archipelago, destroying most of the original vegetation.

I am watching a group of elephant seals, in phase of moult: They are bathing in the mud to soothe the itching caused by this change of skin.

Maybe this young elephant seal will have some difficulties to get out of its bath of mud!

On background, behind me, the first grey building is a former factory, built by the Société industrielle des abattoirs parisiens (SIDAP) [industrial society of Parisian slaughterhouses] in 1955-1957. This society hunted the elephant seals and boiled them to extract oil. This plant was closed in 1960.

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