The ancient whale hunting station on the Kerguelen southern islands (Travelog: 9/16)

<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT = "#ABCBBE"> <BR> Back to the base, we leave with the barge of the Marion Dufresne to <B>Port Jeanne d'Arc</B> (usually called "PJDA"), an old whale hunting station.<BR> This station was built by Norwegians at the end of the 19th century : one still distinguishes very well the furnaces being used to recover the oil from the whale, and the tanks used for the oil storage. It was abandoned in 1920, because it did not resist the competition of the very new ship-factories.<BR> The evening, in this mini phantom city, we pick up and cook the local moulds, followed by a bridge game.<BR> With regard to the whales, we could observe at only one occasion a whale and its baby, as well as rorquals on several occasions : these whales of small sizes, indeed, were less decimated than the others, because they were regarded as not enough "profitable" to hunt. On the contrary, the "humpback" whales, for example, were practically exterminated : less than 10 000 individuals today, that is to say more than thirty times less than at the end of the last century.<BR> </BODY>