Why Tourist Should Limit Antarctic Trips
This tourist season in Antarctica, hardy types will still venture to this frozen land even with its unfriendly snow, ice, isolation, high winds and raging seas, and about the 11,200 tourists gearing for the trip shall arrive from cruise ship travel while only 130 of them will come from other transportation. 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. Among the many watchers of Antarctica, they all predict Antarctic visitors growing by the thousands each year, and this makes them extremely worried about its environment.
Twenty thousand dollars gets one person a cruise to Antarctica, but he will have to also shoulder his 14 day cruise that costs a hefty six to seven thousand dollars and of course, a round trip ticket as he will have to depart from Ushuaia Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego, where 90 percent of voyagers originate. While most perceive Antarctica to be insulated from tourist throngs with the price of going there coupled by its unforgiving climate and geography, many of the naturalists today still insist that they have exceeded the acceptable number of tourists and this poses threats to their ecosystem.
The distinguished director of the Antarctic Project said that while he is all for people seeing the great beauty of Antarctica, there must be a cap on the number of visitors per year and a strong limit on exploiting new sites. Forty various countries containing 200 or more environmental teams use this as their secretariat for the Washington based initiative. There is truth to the fact that most who come to Antarctica come back committed to this continent’s conservation, but then the down part is that this is a fragile land and there are too many people simply loving it exceedingly.
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. Even as tour groups arriving there do not even exceed a hundred at one occasion. The animals don’t get much rest between visits and don’t have, much time, to get food for themselves or their young.
But as to a long term effect, even science, unfortunately cannot answer that, she states. Concerns include visitors touching plants and not being able to abide by garbage disposal promulgations. With the proper reinforcement of the Treaty of Antarctica, we know understand the reason why many experienced staff see to it that travelers going ashore do not make much or any impact, and also this sheds light as to why most tour operators strictly operate with these guidelines and rules. To protect the environment, the series of efforts such as the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, ratified by 43 different countries, along with the environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998 put an end to the various oil explorations and mining operations and even went into promoting environmental safeguards like limiting the fishing sprees along with lessening cruises around the Antarctic.
Members that are part of the New York based association of tour operators have openly adopted the limit for shore visits which only accommodate a hundred people at a time and entail the use of motorized rubber boats known as zodiacs. Air craft with the flag of Russia would be flying, 9 out of the 15 this season. With the Soviet Union’s break up, an opportunity for tour operators came as several small ships have been made available. An average of 40 to 80 people are welcome aboard these ships, several vessels along one that is know to be an ice breaker, all of them being able to plow through ice with hardened hulls. But as for now, environmental concerns keep plaguing the Earth’s final frontier. We can wish that as we look back in the future, we heave a sigh of relief, as all those worries did not really come to something. But even as we are raring to visit this beautiful continent, let us restrain ourselves until science brings the answers.
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