How Limiting Tourism Can Address Antarctica's Woes
This coming tourists season, Antarctica will be welcoming about 11
,200 tourists and all of them except for 130 travelers, coming in via cruise liners, proof enough that this continent's harsh conditions such as isolation, snow, ice, high winds and raging seas are not enough to ward off the tourists.With a growth of 400 compared to last year's tourists proving to not be very impressive with the tourist season that runs from the middle of November up to February, the fact is that this is actually a 70 percent jump compared to the 6,585 tourist seasons that came before it.
Antarctica's many watchers are growing worried towards its environment and warned that Antarctic visitors could grow by the thousands annually.
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.
But even as Antarctica seems to be insulated from tourist throngs due to the price and its tough climate and geography, most environmentalists aver that it may already have saturated in terms of tourists and this is tantamount to ecological harm.
The man behind the Antarctic Project notes that even as he wants all the world to see the Antarctic region's breathtaking scenery, capping tourists coming in and limiting new sites explorations is a must.
This Washington based initiative is the secretariat for the 200 conservation teams spanning across 40 countries and growing. While people, after visiting Antarctica become committed to protecting its environment, the truth is that there are just too many of these travelers and there's a risk that they are falling for this fragile place too much.
A major concern of this director, who favors a limit of 6,000 visitors a year, is that most tourists visit the same few places on the 800 mile long Antarctic Peninsula, which has the continent's biggest concentration of penguins, seals and birds.
But then tour groups reaching land does not exceed a hundred visitors per time. Thanks to the visitors, animals barely get to rest or feed themselves or their offspring.
Even science is uncertain if there will be a long term repercussion, she avers. Among the concerns are that tourists will touch plants and leave garbage behind.
The numbers of experienced staffs make sure that as tourists go ashore, minimal environmental impact is caused by tourists and this is also the reason why tour operators abide by Antarctic Treaty system pattered guidelines.
The Antarctic Treaty of 1959, ratified after the signature of 43 different countries, on top of the environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998 ended the oil explorations and mining operations as well as ventured into environmental safeguards from fishing limits up to Antarctic cruises on various seasons.
Members of the New York based association group have voluntarily adopted the limit for shore visits which can only accommodate a hundred people at a time and for this, they bring in the use of motorized rubber boats, zodiacs.
This season saw 9 out of the 15 vessels flying Russian flags around the White Continent. The Soviet Union disbandment saw several small sea vessels seized by tour operators for their advantage. Forty to eighty passengers can be accommodated in those ships whose hulls are hardened against ice, vessels that also include an icebreaker.
Meanwhile, the growing concern toward the environment of Antarctica, though, is extremely evident. We hope to reach the day in the future that we could all look back, saying that our worries were in vain for they amounted to nothing at all.
But for now, as science has not come up with the solutions yet, let us take it on ourselves to limit our travels to the Earth's last frontier.
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