Few Pictures

Bay Larose (south part of the archipelago) flood basalts. The cliffs have about 6-700 m heigh.

Penguins are very common creatures on Kerguelen Archipelago and are extremely fascinating to watch. There are king penguins, macaroni penguins and small penguins.

Kerguelen Archipelago is characterized by very variable weather characteristics, from blue sky to pouring rain in a very short time period. The blowing winds average 110 km/h over the whole year and it is not unusaul to get snow at sea level in the middle of the summer.

One example of the volcanic sections we studied in detail: Mt. Bureau is 650 m tall and constituted of transitional and alkali basalts with different source characteristics.

The field party of the 1993 field season: from left to right: Eric Frappa, Dominique Weis, Jean-Yves Cottin, André Giret, Fred Frey, Nobu Shimizu and Olivier Brisse.

The SE Province of the archipelago is characterized by the presence of differentiated intrusions and plugs within the flood basalts. The compositions of these differentiated lavas range from trachytes, phonolites to tephrites. The little hut at the front of the picture is the most spacious one on the archipelago and holds 4 sleepings.

Another characteristic of the SE Province is the presence of numerous basic and ultra-basic xenoliths in the alkali lavas. The Dome Rouge outcrop is especially rich in quantity and variety of xenoliths.

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