Touring the Antarctic brings danger

gzlaser

SHIP tourism to Antarctica is on the rise: More than 35,000 tourists are expected to visit Antarctica this spring and summer. In 1992-93, 6,750 visited Antarctica, according to the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat. All of this tourism, however, is posing great danger to both tourists and the environment.

Among the tourist ships that visit the continent, the Explorer, a Canadian ship, was one of the first. Launched in 1969, it was built to ferry tourists to Antarctica. Last week, however, it became the first commercial passenger ship to sink beneath the polar region's waters.

Fortunately, all of the passengers and crew members were evacuated from the ship. However, the sunken ship threatens the Antarctic's fragile environment. The ship was estimated to be holding 48,000 gallons of marine diesel fuel.

The accident was not unanticipated. Both the US and UK had warned a conference of Antarctic treaty nations in May that the tourism situation in the region was a potential disaster.

The US said in a paper, people \"should take a hard look at tourism issues now, especially those related to vessel safety.\"

Although the Antarctic seas are relatively calm, floating ice poses a potential threat to ships. The owner of the Explorer attributed the sinking to a fist-size hole in the hull created by ice.

Many of the other large cruise ships now visiting Antarctica have little or no ice reinforcement in their designs. Such ships generally can only come to the continent at the height of summer. But the tourist rush is pushing vessels into dangerous situations.

\"The increasing number of ships operating in Antarctica means that ships are under greater pressures to meet the time slots for visiting key sites,\" the British government wrote in a paper at the meeting of treaty nations.

As a natural frontier, Antarctica is in a legal muddle. There are no obvious answers as to who is responsible for dealing with the threat that tourism may cause to human life and the environment.

Jim Barnes, executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, told the New York Times: \"There's no military or coast guard for Antarctica.\"

He asked: \"Do we want this (the Antarctic) to become Disneyland, or do we want some controls?\"