Damage done by tourism to the White Continent

Despite Antarctica's ice, snow, isolation, high winds and raging seas and for hardy types, precisely for these reasons, the continent will be visited by an estimated 11,200 people this tourist season, all but about 130 of them on cruise ships. This total is still seventy percent higher than the 6,585 seasons before it even as this is only 400 times more visitors than last year's tourist season, slated from mid November up until February. Some Antarctica watchers, are concerned about its environment, have warned there could be thousand more annual Antarctic visitors.

An Antarctic cruise can easily reach $20,000 just for a single traveler as the average 14-day cruise is a still hefty $6,000 to $7,000, plus the traveler will have to purchase a round trip ticket to where 90 percent of the trips depart, in Ushuaia, Argentina in Tierra del Fuego. Many environmental experts state that Antarctica is not invincible even with its tough climate and geography as well as the price of getting there as the tourists keep growing each year and this truly affects the land's ecosystem.

The brains behind the Antarctic Project reveals that limiting tourists that come in every year along with restricting the exploitation of new sites is a must now even as it is a wonderful experience to venture to Antarctica and behold its beauty. Such is the secretariat for more than 200 conservation organizations within 40 various nations and is a Washington based project. Amid the fact that most of Antarctic visitors come back committed to strive for the conservation of this land, so many have become dangerously obsessed and oftentimes, too many flood this fragile frozen continent.

The sole area boasting of having the biggest concentration of seals, penguins and birds is the one place frequented by so many tourists and this made this director push for a 6,000 yearly limit for visitors who venture to the Antarctic Peninsula which is 800 miles long. Even as tour groups arriving there do not even exceed a hundred at one occasion. This impacts the animals adversely as they cannot get to rest in between visits and they also cannot sustain food for themselves not even for themselves.

Science is unable to see yet if this will have a long term impact, she further reveals. Concerns include visitors touching plants and not being able to abide by garbage disposal promulgations. This is the reason why visitors going ashore are guarded by experienced staffs to make sure these do not create minimal impact and further thanks to the Antarctic System, most of today's tour operators adhere to such promulgations. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty supported by 43 different nations, along with the environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998 pushed for the end of mining and oil drilling, and also implemented safety measures such as limiting fishing trips and cruises throughout White Continent to protect the environment.

The association of tour members, which is based in New York, saw to it that they all adopted the 100 person limit for shore visits, also employing zodiacs, which are motorized rubber boats for good reasons. Russian flags are being flown, this season, by nine air crafts out of the fifteen commissioned. With the Soviet Union's break up, an opportunity for tour operators came as several small ships have been made available. As for the passengers, about 40 to 80 are welcome in these vessels, including an icebreaker and several others with hardened hulls that can resist strong ice. Now, we see how obvious the problems of Antarctica keeps concerning more and more parties. We could pray that in the future, as we all look back we realize that the troubles and worries were insubstantial. However, as we await for the answers to be drawn by science, let us carry the moral responsibility of restraining our trips to Antarctica as much as we want to go there.

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