Amandine Barles, an ecologist and volunteer for civilian service with the Centre d'études biologiques de Chizé, a CNRS laboratory, and employed by the French Polar Institute, arrived at Petrel Island in Adélie Land after an 18-day journey from Paris, 11 of which were spent trapped in ice. She began her mission immediately upon arrival, stating it was a "state of emergency" with no time for visits to the base or unpacking belongings. Her task involved collecting field data for a 60-year-old ornithological observatory. Before being admitted to the base, Barles underwent a battery of medical and psychological tests. She was allowed to bring 120 kg of belongings, including thermal underwear, a swimsuit, board games, sunscreen, evening wear, appetizer cakes, and philatelic stamps. France established its presence in Antarctica in 1952, but a fire destroyed the first French station, Port-Martin, on January 23, 1952. Seven of the occupants then joined a small annex located further west on Petrel Island, which had been built to observe an emperor penguin colony. They spent the winter there, with Mario Marret, the radio operator and filmmaker, as the figurehead, whose cabin still bears his name. They left in January 1953. Three years later, France chose the same site for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, which aimed to understand the physical properties of the Earth and its interactions with the Sun. The metal prefabricated buildings erected in 1956 were named the Antarctic base Dumont-d'Urville. Designed for 20 people and three years of occupation, they are still standing, and part of the facilities are still in use 70 years later. The Dumont-d'Urville Antarctic base now occupies nearly 5,000 square meters of buildings, five kilometers from the continent. From March to November, a dozen people live there, divided between general services and scientific services; a hundred people can stay there in the summer. Barles' program is one of the authorized programs. There are ten shelters scattered across the island - they house sensors for magnetism, seismology, and ozone, a tide gauge measures the sea level to the nearest minute, and it is from there that the tractor expeditions to the Franco-Italian Concordia station, 1,200 kilometers further on the plateau, depart. Barles' mission, called program 109, called Ornithoéco, is a long-term observatory of populations of birds and marine mammals in the French Austral and Antarctic territories. Thirty-two species of top predators are followed on four observatories, from Antarctica to the subtropical zones, some for more than sixty years. Nine species were her responsibility, including eight bird species: the emperor penguin, the Adélie penguin, the snow petrel, the cape petrel, the Antarctic fulmar, the giant petrel, the Wilson's storm petrel, and the McCormick's skua, to which was added the Weddell seal. She was responsible for the demographic monitoring of nesting populations through counting and individual tracking methods, notably through the ringing of birds. They also studied certain behaviors in the emperor penguin, its diet or the distribution of birds at sea through the deployment of GPS and GLS. Concretely, it is about listing the breeding pairs, identifying the adults by reading the rings, determining the laying and hatching dates, ringing the chicks, and finally quantifying their ability to fly. A maximum of 300 emperor penguin chicks can be manipulated each season. The emperor penguin is the only one to reproduce in the middle of the Antarctic winter, the male incubating the single egg placed on his feet for several months of fasting, while the female goes to feed at sea. The chicks hatch in the heart of winter and only take to the sea in December, once their waterproof plumage is acquired. All this calendar depends on the coastal ice, this ice fixed to the shore or to stranded icebergs. If it breaks up too early, the chicks fall into the water without knowing how to swim. All these protocols are repeated identically year after year on precise dates in order to be able to analyze the variations observed over time and relate them to environmental conditions. The monitoring of the emperor penguins of Pointe-Géologie goes back to the 1960s, that of the snow petrels to 1963, "which makes this ringing monitoring one of the oldest in the world." The colony is thus the only one in the world to have an uninterrupted demographic series over half a century. The emperor penguin colony of Dumont-d'Urville suffered a strong decline between 1975 and 1982, passing from about 6,000 breeding pairs to less than 3,000. This number stabilized until the beginning of the 2000s. Since then it has increased moderately. During her wintering in June 2025, Barles counted about 5,200 breeding pairs, the largest number since 1975. In the context of global warming, this increase in population size can be explained by a better reproductive success due to a reduction in the distance to open water in winter, at the time of raising the chicks. However, the warming of the waters affects the primary productivity of the oceans and thereby reduces the survival of adults. According to the latest models, the population is destined, in the long term, to decline. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has indeed moved the emperor penguin from the "near threatened" to "endangered" category on its red list, on April 9, 2026, based on projections predicting a population halved by the 2080s. The tags, on the other hand, retraced paths almost impossible to observe directly outside of the breeding season. The Antarctic fulmars of Adélie Land move west during the winter and mainly feed in the polar front zone, while the cape petrels concentrate near the coasts of New Zealand, Tasmania, and Macquarie. The snow petrels, on the other hand, remain further south, in the ice and sea ice zone. These data are precious to identify the conservation areas of interest for these seabird species. The proximity and isolation make human relationships very strong and intense. Emotions can be amplified and it is sometimes difficult to take a step back and remember that there is a life beyond our base, our small closed circle of winterers. One has to deal with all kinds of situations and personalities, deal with one's own emotions as well. Being there for the people we appreciate and being kind to those we like less. One learns to really know each other, independently of what one has been and lived until then. Only the present counts. Low morale, disturbed sleep, amplified emotions, noise intolerance are grouped under the term of mental wintering syndrome, which the winterers have shortened for their use. "When it wasn't too bad, we used to say we were syndromed," the ecologist jokes. The seasons also affect the health of the winterers. "I had a lot of energy during the summer, when it never got dark. I could go to bed very late and chain workdays by getting up early in the morning. On the contrary, winter was very tiring, even with a lot of sleep and reduced activity." The lack of fresh products and natural light eventually creates deficiencies in vitamins C and D. Without forgetting the cold, which governs the daily life. "The body does not become more resistant with exposure. On the contrary, the accumulation of micro-injuries would make the body more fragile gradually. However, one gets used to the feeling of cold and tolerates it more easily. It is part of the daily life to be cold, not to feel one's fingers after a certain time spent outside, trying to bring blood back to one's limbs, going back in and having chilblains." Before Adélie Land, Barles had mainly worked with other ecologists. "The collection of field data would be impossible without the almost daily support of handlers to assist us," she points out. On Petrel Island, a plumber, a doctor, a carpenter, cooks, meteorological forecasters, mechanics, a chemist, an IT specialist, soldiers, and electricians took turns accompanying her in the field, without which nothing could have been counted or ringed. At the Dumont d'Urville Antarctic base, "science is everyone's affair," she concludes.