Dumont Durville Station

The french antartic station: Dumont Durville
On 9 of January, after 7 days on the boat, we finally flew by helicopter to our new home: Dumont Durville Station (DDU). The station is quite big and now in summer can accomodate around 80 people. And it provides all the facilities to spend a confortable winter: big winter dormitory building with 42 places, small hospital, living room and kitchen building,laboratories (geophysics, biology, glaciology and meteorology),electricity and water supply building, post office... The station is located on the french antartic territory, Terre Adélie, on a small island, 5 km far from the continent. During winter and spring the sea is frozen so it allows to go for long walks around the archipel, but during december and january the pack thaws and we get stuck on the island, till the end of march. In summer the island is unhabited by a large colony of Adelie penguins: around 8000 couples are here now for the reproduction season.



Landing at DDU

Biology and veterinary laboratory

Emperor penguin chicks and dormitory building

Dormitory building

DDU Station and Adélie penguins colony

DDU Station and Adélie penguin

On the boat to Antartica

Astrolabe

Last view of Tasmania

My first icebergs

Crabeater seals

Through the ice pack

Weddell seal running from the boat

Preparing the helicopter

My new friends

First news from the white continent!

Here I am, in my quiet room at Dumont Durville station, Terre Adélie,
Antartica...
The journey was long and not really confortable, but exciting as well.
After an 11 hours flight from Paris on 1st of december we visited
Hong-Kong for a day. Honk-Kong is an amazing city, mixing modernism and
tradition. After walking 10 hours through the city we flew to Sydney were
we had a short stop (but long enough to have a drink on a terrasse,
enjoying australian summer...) and finally we took our last plane to
Hobart, Tasmania. There the boat was waiting for us, and the day after we
started with our final journey, a 7 days-long trip through the agitated
antartic ocean... I got terrible sea-sick and spent 4 days in bed. But
when I got up, I could see the first icebergs, penguins, and seals from
the boat wich was slowly making his way through the ice... Amazing...
The boat finally got stuck 30 miles from the coast and we had to finish
our journey by helicopter to reach the station.
And we got to know our new home, with the thousands of Adelie penguins
nesting on each single rock of the island, the amazing landscape we have
from our dormitory, the nearby emperor penguins colony...The sea-ice is
about to disapear around the station so we enjoy the last walks around
before beeing stuck for the rest of the summer on our small island. We
have to be carefull on each step, few people already had a cold bath this
week..

Pictures are to come in next posts...

Hong Kong

My future antartic family

Here we are, the future 26 selected to spend one year at the french antartic base, Dumont D'Urville.

Seal Rehabilitation and Research Center

Hola amigos!
Para empezar con este blog, pondre algunas fotos de mi estancia en Holanda con las foquitas...