Hardy types will still venture to Antarctica despite its unfriendly ice, snow, isolation, high winds and raging seas and around 11,200 tourists will be surging in, with all except for a hundred and thirty of them this tourist season, coming in via cruise ships. Even as the total is around 400 more than last year's flow of tourists, specifically from mid November to February, it is 70 percent higher than 6,585 seasons before it. Some of the watchers of the white continent state that there could be thousand more annual Antarctic voyagers and this could be a concern for its environment.
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 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. There is still harm in the fact that people heading to Antarctica come back committed to its conservation as this is a very fragile land and there can sometimes be too many visitors flooding in most of who are getting to love it 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. However, tourists groups setting foot on the ground does not often exceed 100 visitors at a certain occasion. The animals don't get much rest between visits and don't have, much time, to get food for themselves or their young.
She notes further that Science cannot say yet if a long term impact will arise from this. Tourists tinkering with the plants and not disposing garbage properly is two of Antarctica's growing woes. Thanks to the systems patterned after the Antarctic Treaty, visitors go ashore with staff making sure that they cause no impact to the environment and all tour operators are able to strictly abide by this. Ratified efforts that starts with the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, since signed by 43 various countries on top of an environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998, put an end to mining and oil explorations as well as put environmental safety measures like limiting Antarctic cruises and fishing sprees.
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 let us all be responsible and keep ourselves from frequent Antarctic visits while science do not know the answers yet.
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 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. There is still harm in the fact that people heading to Antarctica come back committed to its conservation as this is a very fragile land and there can sometimes be too many visitors flooding in most of who are getting to love it 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. However, tourists groups setting foot on the ground does not often exceed 100 visitors at a certain occasion. The animals don't get much rest between visits and don't have, much time, to get food for themselves or their young.
She notes further that Science cannot say yet if a long term impact will arise from this. Tourists tinkering with the plants and not disposing garbage properly is two of Antarctica's growing woes. Thanks to the systems patterned after the Antarctic Treaty, visitors go ashore with staff making sure that they cause no impact to the environment and all tour operators are able to strictly abide by this. Ratified efforts that starts with the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, since signed by 43 various countries on top of an environmental protocol signed last January 14, 1998, put an end to mining and oil explorations as well as put environmental safety measures like limiting Antarctic cruises and fishing sprees.
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 let us all be responsible and keep ourselves from frequent Antarctic visits while science do not know the answers yet.
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